The challenge

The project focused on developing a reliable crash simulation model for a multi-part composite body structure combining monolithic CFRP components, sandwich structures with foam cores, local reinforcements, and metallic inserts.
The vehicle body consisted of multiple subassemblies manufactured using different structural concepts, including reinforced side panels with foam-filled sections, sandwich roof panels, a monolithic floor structure, reinforced rear cross members, a metallic battery enclosure, and bonded and bolted joints. This combination of technologies directly influences load paths and collapse mechanisms during impact events.
Electric vehicle architecture introduces an additional critical requirement: protecting the battery compartment by controlling intrusion and deformation within the battery area and underbody while preventing localized load peaks that could result in severe structural damage.
To validate the design concept, several representative crash scenarios based on internationally recognized regulations and industry protocols were analyzed, including full frontal impact, offset deformable barrier impact, side pole impact, rear impact, and roof crush. These simulations enabled the early identification of critical structural regions and guided the optimization of geometry, joints, and laminate architecture.

Our contribution

SmartCAE managed the project using the engineering methodology typically adopted in motorsport composite development. Starting from the CAD geometry, we developed a finite element model capable of accurately reproducing the behavior of composite materials while accounting for real manufacturing constraints, avoiding oversimplifications that can conceal structural weaknesses and generate misleading simulation results.
The model was organized into individual subassemblies, defining laminate properties such as ply thicknesses, fiber orientations, and local reinforcements. Sandwich structures with foam cores, stiffening elements, and hybrid integrations—including localized reinforcements and metallic components in strategically important areas—were accurately represented.
Particular attention was devoted to joint modeling. Wherever the composite structure interacted with metallic assemblies and the battery enclosure, adhesive bonds, bolted connections, and contact definitions were carefully modeled, as these interfaces often determine whether crash energy is dissipated progressively or concentrated into premature structural failures.
The crash simulations were then critically analyzed to investigate the characteristic failure mechanisms of CFRP structures, including compression damage in the floor and supporting structures, skin failure and foam core collapse during side impacts, and localized failures caused by stiffness transitions in reinforced regions.
Drawing on extensive experience with high-performance composite monocoques and structural components, SmartCAE transformed numerical simulation results into practical engineering recommendations, balancing crash performance, global structural stiffness, and manufacturability, including advanced production technologies such as High-Pressure RTM and the integration of local reinforcements and metallic inserts.

Benefits for the client

The primary benefit for the customer is a product development process driven by engineering simulation rather than costly trial-and-error prototype testing. When composite crash simulations are built correctly, they identify at an early stage where the structure efficiently absorbs impact energy and where undesirable collapse mechanisms are likely to occur.
This capability is especially valuable for electric vehicles, where battery protection and intrusion management must be incorporated into the structural architecture from the earliest design phases rather than addressed through late-stage modifications.
SmartCAE’s motorsport expertise in composite engineering provides an additional competitive advantage. We can accurately interpret progressive damage mechanisms and translate them into practical design improvements by optimizing local reinforcements, maintaining fiber continuity, managing stiffness transitions, and strategically integrating metallic components only where they provide real structural benefits.
As a result, customers benefit from faster and better-informed engineering decisions, fewer expensive design iterations, reduced risks during physical validation, and composite structures that are more robust against the natural variability of composite manufacturing processes—including thickness tolerances, bonding quality, and process variations—while achieving the high levels of performance expected from next-generation electric vehicles.