A COMPARISON BETWEEN EXPERIMENTAL TESTING AND NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF IMPACT LOADING ON ALUMINUM AND MAGNESIUM STEERING WHEEL ARMATURES

In the present automotive industry, all corporations are focusing on developing automobiles which are light weight, fuel efficient, conform to a level of safety outlined by government regulations, and are available to the consumer at a reasonable cost. The automobile industry has placed a significant amount of time and research funding into developing vehicles which can meet these requirements. K.S. Centoco Ltd., a steering wheel manufacturer, located in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, has developed a testing machine to investigate collisions occurring with steering wheels. This machine considers several experimental parameters in impact testing while providing a large amount of information to be obtained in an experiment. Experimental testing was conducted on a four spoke steering wheel armature which is manufactured from a magnesium alloy. In an effort to compare the structural worthiness of magnesium and aluminum alloys in an impact situation, the identical armature was fabricated from a proprietary aluminum alloy and impact experiments were also conducted with the geometrically identical aluminum armature. Numerical simulation of the experimental process has also been conducted using LS-DYNA. Detailed four spoke steering wheel armature finite element models (employing both magnesium and aluminum alloys) have been developed and simulated under similar conditions which were conducted experimentally. Comparisons between experimental tests at six different impact situations with collisions between the steering wheel armature and a rigid plate are presented in this paper. As well, comparison of the finite element model is considered by investigating changes in the element formulation associated with the armature. The experimental and numerical observations indicate that the predictive capabilities of the aluminum material model are better developed than the magnesium material model. In addition, selection of the finite element formulation significantly affects the numerical results.