2020 Volume 51 Issue 5 Pages 794-799
Deformations of structures consisting mainly of thin metal sheets, such as automobile bodies, comprise sheet stretch, shearing, and bending. The bending component largely reduces the stiffness by reducing the sheet thickness. In this paper, the exponent that should be used to approximate the change in stiffness with respect to the rate of increase in sheet thickness with a power law is introduced as the bending factor that evaluates the degree of bending deformation of the sheet in a structure under elastic deformation. Additionally, the part-bending factor is proposed to evaluate the amount of bending deformation that occurs in each component of the structure. These two factors are applied to simple models that represent the frame joints of an automobile body to evaluate the load transfer efficiency. Furthermore, in the vehicle body structure, parts which require structural improvement to increase stiffness are extracted from the part-bending factor and thickness sensitivity.
