Functional Analysis and Geometrical Optimization of the Automotive’s Door Inner Waist Belt Made from PP/TPV-E Using FEM Method

Abstract

In this paper, the authors present how the inner door waist belt geometry was optimized using the car model and FEM (Finite Element Method) so that functional requirements are satisfied. Through this analysis, high costs have been avoided resulting from poor functionality of the component, identified by its practical implementation. The software used was Simulia ABAQUS. The difficulty of the achieved FEM analysis consists in finding the optimal algorithm for modeling a relatively new combination of materials, polypropylene (PP) and vulcanized thermoplastic elastomer (TPV-E) with hyperelastic feature.