Parameters Affecting Torsional Stiffness of Vehicle Doors

Side doors are pivotal components of any vehicle, not only for their aesthetic and safety aspects but also due to their direct interaction with customers. Therefore, ensuring good structural performance of side doors is crucial, especially under various loading conditions during vehicle use. Among the vital performance criteria for door design, torsional stiffness plays an important role in ensuring an adequate life cycle of door. This paper focuses on investigating the impact of several door structural parameters on the torsional stiffness of side doors. These parameters include the positioning of the latch, the number of door side hinge mounting points on doors (single or double bolt), and the design of door inner panel with or without Tailor Welded Blank (TWB) construction. The findings of this study reveal that the change in latch position has the most significant influence on torsional stiffness, followed by the removal of TWB from the inner panel, upon implementation of suitable local hinge reinforcements in TWB removed design, torsional stiffness enhances significantly. While decreasing the number of hinge mountings from a double bolt to a single bolt configuration does affect torsional stiffness, it has the least impact among these three parameters. All these parameters are very useful from vehicle architectural, weight optimization and assembly process aspects and consideration of same would lead to optimized door design with less weight and cost.