Design of a Light Weight Aluminium Unibody Structure

Unibody structure is widely used structure for lots of passenger cars. Designing these structures to be cost effective, lightweight, stiff and safe is always a trade-off. Body structure contributes for almost 18% to 25% weight of the vehicle and also vehicle stiffness depends on this part. Any change in body structure will affect the performance of the vehicle, so it is the critical part of vehicles. Now a day almost all manufactures are under enormous pressure from governments and competitors for developing vehicles of low cost and high performance with maximum fuel economy. One of the ways of reducing fuel consumption of vehicles is reduce its weight, for every 10% of weight reduction in mass of the vehicle there will be 6% increase of fuel economy. Though steel is the traditional material for the body structure, aluminium is the best option to replace it for weight reduction, without reducing the performance of the car. Performance of aluminium in crashworthiness and energy absorption is also at acceptable levels.