CHALLENGES ENCOUNTERED IN PRODUCING COMPOSITE CRASH BOXES WITH DIFFERENT SECTIONAL GEOMETRY

The purpose of crash boxes is to protect the vehicle and its occupants in possible accidents bypreserving vehicle integrity. It performs this process thanks to its energy absorption ability. Thehigher energy absorption ability, the better protection it provides. Crash boxes, which aregenerally made of metallic materials, create extra weight for vehicles. Therefore, studies oncrash boxes focus on composite materials that are lighter and have as good mechanicalproperties as metallic materials. Research focuses on many shapes such as square, conical,hexagonal, cylindrical and origami. On the other hand, there are studies on the effect of the typeof fiber used, the effect of hybridization, and the addition of filler material. The productionmethod is also an important factor in composite materials. Composite materials are generallyproduced by hand lay-up, filament winding or vacuum infusion methods. In our study, solutionsregarding the difficulties encountered during the production phase of vacuum infusion methodfiber-reinforced epoxy resin matrix composite crash boxes are included. The difficultiesencountered are primarily the presence of templates with the geometry to be produced. Theproduction was carried out by selecting metal and cardboard as templates. However, the metaltemplates provided a good hybridization with the fibers and provided a solid hybrid compositematerial. Although corrugated cardboards were first wrapped around the metal templates tosolve this problem, problem was not solved, the vacuum infusion method affected the thinstructure of the cardboard, provided very good adhesion to the metal and prevented tubes fromcoming out after production. The problem was then solved by wrapping a thicker corrugatedpipe. After the vacuum infusion process and curing were completed, the cardboard wasdissolved by immersion in water and shaped composite tubes were produced. In the productionof cylindrical tubes, a cardboard core was used as a template, and after the specification process,the cardboard was dissolved and only the sample remained.