Category: Automotive & Road Transportation – Design Part

Winner: Carbon roll cage for production cars

Organization: Porsche AG (Germany)

Partners: Action Composites GmbH (Austria); Kube GmbH Ingenieurbüro (Germany); Lab for Lightweight Design, IKTD, University of Stuttgart (Germany)

An extremely lightweight carbon roll cage enabled by unique geometry has been fitted into a road-legal production car. The initial metal design was able to withstand extreme elongation. Thus, the use of carbon fiber presented a major challenge for this application because of its typically low elongation at break. The engineering innovation of the project is a new three-step structural optimization process providing a specific design suitable for carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) taking full consideration of an extremely limited design space as well as multiple crash and load cases.

Key benefits:

• High weight reduction compared to steel and even titanium;
• optimized topology through a unique bionic design;
• innovative calculation approach — automated link between CAD and finite element analysis (FEA);
• innovative manufacturing process — structural hollow part in serial production;
• fulfills Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) load collective.