Abstract
Car cross beam made by aluminium for new car is designed for the substitution of steel and it can be verified the performance by computer simulations. The parts of car cross beam are designed to replace steel parts according to their manufacturing processes. At the first stage, the weight of the aluminium car cross beam can be reduced to 75% by comparing with that of steel car cross beam. But NVH performance of the aluminium car cross beam becomes slightly insufficient as compared with that of steel car cross beam. Taguchi method is adopted to optimize the design variables affecting NVH characteristics of car cross beam. New car cross beam is designed at the second stage by using these analysis results. Weight reduction can be obtained to 31.7% by design modification and material change of car cross beam in comparison with the original steel one. NVH characteristics of aluminium car cross beam become on an equal level with the steel car cross beam. By side impact analysis results, new car cross beam has higher performance as compared with the steel car cross beam.