Property Characterization of PC/ABS Blends for Use in Energy Management Applications

With the implementation of air bags into today's vehicles, the functional requirements of the instrument panel have changed significantly. Screening of different candidate systems is difficult due to the expense and time involved in testing to the FMVSS requirements. Plastic material properties also vary with temperature and strain rate which increases the complexity of the testing required. It is the objective of this paper to investigate the response of PC/ABS blends to this environment. Also, a summary of mathematically modeling plastic materials with commercial software in energy management environments is presented.

This paper will discuss the results of testing PC/ABS blends at strain rates and temperatures typical to that of impact conditions and correlation of these tests to different material models used in finite element codes.