A new composite integrated door hardware module has been produced by the Ranger Group for Lancia’s Ypsilon subcompact passenger car. The module is claimed to meet all European side-impact and hip-protection requirements with no foam pad, injection molded inlay, or other carrier reinforcement. Additionally, Lancia was able to use a minimized steel bar in the door’s outer skin. The module provides intrusion protection through clever design and high-tech, glass-mat thermoplastic composites from Quadrant Plastic Composites.

All automakers must meet intrusion-protection standards for the passenger or driver. But in Europe, there is also an additional hip-protection requirement to meet. Since there was no easy way to integrate this function into existing door module designs, a separate component – either a foam pad or injection-molded inlay – had to be installed. Ironically, this step added both weight and components – two of the features that door hardware modules were designed to reduce.

To meet its performance requirements, Ranger Group worked in partnership with Quadrant Plastic Composites to determine the best material for this new application. First, all candidate materials were subjected to a series of standard small-scale laboratory tests to measure compression, tensile, and impact properties. Top-performing candidates were then subjected to a series of rigorous crash tests on full-size molded door modules loaded on a 912-kg sled at room temperature.

Both a side-impact test (with a 200-mm UTAC pole and speeds increasing from 0.92-1.47 m/s penetration rates until part failure/breakage) and a secondary hip-impact test (with 220x220-mm flat impactor and speeds increasing from 1.62- 1.78 m/s until part breakage) were conducted to assess crash worthiness of different materials in the module’s design. Improvements to the clamping design allowed steel-like deformations to be approximated with plastic composites.