Designing Automotive Dash Panels with Laminated Metal

This paper will outline the analytical procedure of designing automotive dash panels with laminated metal. A laminated dash is analyzed to determine its proper gauge to maintain the stiffness of the sheet metal original. A custom preprocessor is used to generate a finite element mesh of a laminated design. A static analysis determines the laminate displacement for some given worst case scenario. Displacements are determined for several loading conditions. The laminate skin thickness is then varied to achieve the same displacement as that of the original sheet metal design. A modal test is then simulated on the laminated dash to demonstrate its NVH characteristics. A natural frequency extraction is done to visualize the vibration profile of the part. Damping is seen with a frequency response calculation due to an impact load on the part. The frequency response clearly shows the reduced vibrations associated with the laminated dash.