Hood design-Week 2

Hood design NX CAD

Objective;

Design hood outer panel, inner panel, and reinforcements with the given outer hood skin, master section, and design parameters.

Introduction;

The hood or bonnet is the hinged cover over the engine of motor vehicles. Hoods can open to allow access to the engine compartment (or trunk on rear-engine and some mid-engine vehicles) for maintenance and repair. From a design perspective, the hood should meet some specific conditions like pedestrian safety, a hood head zone for the lock striker, force distribution when subjected to frontal collision (occupant safety), manufacturability, etc.

A typical hood assembly consists of a hood outer panel, inner panel, latch and striker, hinge, and hood stay. Hood stay is an apparatus for supporting the engine hood of a motor vehicle in its open position. The purpose of opening the engine hood is for inspecting the engine room, replenishing cooling water and engine oil, changing parts and making repairs, etc. Common types of hood stays are Support Rod and Gas Stay. Support rods are manually operated and they are cost effective and simple to design whereas gas stays require no manpower but they are costly. The Hood is typically made out of the same material as the rest of the bodywork. This may include steel and aluminum. Deep drawing, hemming, blanking, and piercing are the common sheet metal operations that are used in manufacturing hoods in automotive industries.

Design parameters;

Hood Thickness Information;

• Outer Panel Thickness = 0.75mm
• Inner Panel Thickness = 0.75mm
• Reinforcement Thickness = 1.5mm

Master Section;

Components;

1. Hood outer panel;

Outer panels are the aesthetic elements of a car. It is the styling team who provides the skin for the outer panel. The shape, position, and size of the hood should satisfy the safety norms. So while designing the hood we should give more importance to pedestrian safety. The outer panel is attached to the inner panel by hemming. So, it is necessary to provide the required hemming flange and reliefs for the hemming operation. We also provide mastic sealants between the outer panel and inner panel to reduce vibration.

2. Hood inner panel;

The inner panel is the part that gives strength and rigidity to the outer panel. The master section represents the initial emboss shape and size. Then we provide the emboss for the latch and hinge elements after fixing the location.

3. Reinforcement;

Reinforcements are provided according to the design requirements. Mainly it is provided at the hinge and latch regions to improve the strength locally. Usually, the thickness of reinforcements will be higher than that of the inner panels and the value varies according to cost and requirement. According to the design requirement here, it is given 1.5mm thickness to both hinge and latch reinforcements.

Latch Trajectory;

Latch trajectory is given by the circle drawn from the hinge axis point. The hinge axis point is the center point of the hinge axis. First, we can fix either the latch or the hinge. If we have fixed the hinge position then we should plot the Trajectory circle for the latch. For proper mating conditions, the striker axis through the tip of the striker should be tangential to the latch trajectory.

Emboss definitions;

Throughout the inner panel, we provide different embosses. We can increase the stiffness of the inner panel through these embosses. The shape and size of the emboss also determine the direction of the force distribution resulting from a frontal collision. The force should be always distributed away from the passengers. Here in the figure the embosses are designed in such a way that the force is directed to either side of the car.

Mastic Data;

Hood commonly possesses a large surface area and hemming can only be provided through its boundary. We cannot use other joining techniques like welding, riveting, etc because they leave marks on the outer panel which spoils its aesthetic appearance. So, mastic sealants are used to stick to the inner surfaces of the outer panel and inner panel. Mastic sealants are elastic compounds that behave like rubber. It is applied between the inner and outer panels at specified spots. Each spot of mastic sealants has its effect around a circular region of 80mm diameter. Thus, the mastic points are arranged in such a way that it covers the areas away from the hemming which is more vulnerable to vibrating.

Deep Drawing;

Deep drawing is one of the most widely used processes in sheet metal forming. Apart from its use in many other sectors, it is applied in the automotive industry for the manufacturing of car body parts. The deep drawing process is a forming process that occurs under a combination of tensile and compressive conditions.

Sheet metal blank is radially drawn into a forming die by the mechanical action of a punch. It is thus a shape transformation process with material retention. The process is considered a "deep" drawing when the depth of the drawn part exceeds its diameter. This is achieved by redrawing the part through a series of dies. The flange region (sheet metal in the die shoulder area) experiences radial drawing stress and tangential compressive stress due to the material retention property. These compressive stresses (hoop stresses) result in flange wrinkles. Wrinkles can be prevented by using a blank holder, the function of which is to facilitate controlled material flow into the die radius.