Design of an automotive inner panel of Back-door

Objective:

• To design the back door of an automobile using the provided styling surface.
• To provide necessary embosses & reinforcements & to study its purpose.

Introduction:

The tail gate or the back door has many primary purposes of which occupant safety is one the most important. A Study from IIHS says that the second most number of crashes happen with rear collision.

It is indeed the responsibility of the design engineers to develop the products with utmost safety & reliability. Besides safety, ergonomics & comfort also plays a major role in Tail-gate design.

Inner Panel :

The design of tail-gate has been shown in the above images. Unlike Hood or other BIW components,the tail-gate commonly has a complicated structure & curvature. It also provides the provisions for Hinge that opens & closes the door, Latch & striker mechanism, Viper-motor, & even many other accesories like de-fogger. The thickness of the sheet metal usally is 0.7-0.75mm. The tail-gate design must also comply with rear-view visibility criteria.

Embosses :

A mix of Hexagonal with Y shaped emboss has been implemented . Studied have shown that Y,M shaped embosses usually provides greater strength & better stress distribution. In addition, the six soft cornered hexagon provides even more smoother distribusion of stress in case of an impact & also helps with reducing the overall weight of the component.

Reinforcement :

The above image shows the placement of reinforcements. Reinforcement are provided in order to strengthen the areas where the component is subjected to an impact on a regular use. The thickness may vary from 1 - 1.5mm .