Novel concepts for safer, lighter, smarter and more sustainable vehicle design

New concepts for a safer, lighter, more sustainable and smarter vehicle design

ThermoPre ENGINEERING GmbH participates in SALIENT, an EU-funded project.

The duration of the project is 36 months and runs from September 2022 to August 2025. SALIENT aims to design, design and validate a new type of vehicle crash management system (CMS), which includes the front of each car, through simulations and crash tests. By developing future-proof lightweight designs, better compatibility with modern forms of mixed traffic is ensured.

SALIENT thus helps to make roads safer and reduce the number of serious injuries and fatalities by better preparing future vehicles for accidents and collisions.

A diverse consortium of twelve partners from all over Europe represents the entire automotive value chain from research institutes, automobile manufacturers, test institutes and certification bodies as well as from small and medium-sized enterprises to original equipment manufacturers.

The CMS of a FIAT Panda was selected as the demonstrator component, in which a 42% weight reduction is to be achieved through the use of carbon fiber reinforced plastic, aluminum and hybrid materials.

At the half-time of the project in February 2024, the first drafts of the new basic designs are already available, with which the goal of a mass reduction of about 50% has already been exceeded.

Thanks to the crash simulations, the concepts are currently detailed and validated. In addition to the optimised design of the CMS, three adaptive systems are integrated into the design design of the CMS to improve the crash suitability of the vehicle. These are e.g. B. Components with variable geometric stiffness in the event of a crash, intelligent components with shape memory alloys and load path variable UD tapes.

The final design will be released in April 2024 and offers an innovative solution for lighter and safer vehicles.

As part of the project, thermoPre ENGINEERING GmbH supports developing carbon fiber-reinforced, thermoplastic UD tapes, which cause improved energy absorption in the CMS through increased ductility.

SALIENT publishes the newsletter "SALIENT In Action" every quarter, which you can receive free of charge directly to your inbox. The project also holds accounts on X and LinkedIn and we invite you to follow our activities there.