Design of Dual Sliding Door for a Small-size Car and Its Validation Using CAE Tools 2007-01-0889

Sliding doors are usually employed on the rear side of minivans and some large vehicles for easy egress and ingress. Furthermore, dual sliding doors are frequently observed in various concept models. This paper describes design of a dual sliding door for a small-size car. A new sliding mechanism with two sliding contact points is proposed with the B-pillar incorporated in the door structure made of high strength steel. Two sliding tracks are located in the door and the rocker panel. The door linkages first swivel and then slide with the help of the rollers in the tracks to open the door. The sliding mechanism and the door structure were validated using CAE tools such as HyperMesh, MSC/NASTRAN [2] and LS-DYNA[3]. This validation process was divided into three parts: (1) Dynamic Stiffness Analysis or the normal mode analysis to understand the natural frequency response of the door. (2) Static Stiffness Analysis or the Door Sag analysis was conducted to see the structural strength of the door in static loading. Finally, (3) Quasi-static side intrusion analysis was performed to see the resistance of the door structure against an intruding pole. The analysis results showed that the door structure achieved the desired structural performance requirements.