• Composites Research
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.37-41
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• 2018

The aim of the current work is to characterise a piecewisely-integrated composite bumper beam based on the IIHS bumper crash protocol. IIHS bumper crash FE analysis for an aluminium type bumper beam was carried out to get the information about the dominant loading types at several regions in the bumper beam during crash. In the meantime, robust stacking sequences against tension and compression have been searched for using FE analysis of a coupon type model. After determining most effective stacking sequences for tension and compression, three-point bending simulation was preliminarily carried out to investigate the combination performance of them. Finally, IIHS bumper crash FE analysis for the piecewisely-integrated composite bumper beam, which consisted of the combination of tension effective stacking sequence and compression efficacious stacking sequence, was conducted and the result was compared with other types of composite bumper beams. It was found that the newly suggested piecewisely-integrated composite bumper beam showed superior crashworthy behaviour to those of uni-modal stacking sequence composite bumper beams.