Industrial application
Bus body structure
Also known as bus body, composite bus monocoque
The body and load-bearing structure of buses, for which sandwich composite monocoques have been designed to save weight, notably for electric buses. It must meet rollover and frontal-crash protection requirements.
Classification
- application category
- ROAD_VEHICLE
How this record is known
- 2
- Settled consensus
- Cited as the accepted position of the discipline.
- 1
- Interpretation
- Reached by reasoning from evidence, or produced by a named model.
3 of 3 claims on this page cite at least one registered source. Counts describe how each statement is known, not how likely it is to be true.
What Lithoen records
Each claim states how it is known and cites its evidence.
EstablishedRollover (UN-ECE R66) and frontal-impact (R29, FMVSS 208) protection; composite crash knowledge limited (as of 2022).
A bus structure must protect occupants in rollover and frontal crashes — rollover under UN-ECE Regulation No. 66, frontal impact through pendulum tests under UN-ECE Regulation No. 29 and rigid-barrier impact under FMVSS 208 — and, as of 2022, passive-safety analyses had mostly been made for metal structures, knowledge of the crash behaviour of composite buses being described as very limited.
- temporal basis: As stated in the 2022 study.
Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence · one source
Evidence: Pattaramon 2022 · Peer-reviewed
Model outputSimulated frontal crash: front structure damaged; stiffeners and thicker cores improved protection for 35.6 kg.
In a finite-element simulation of a 24-seat sandwich composite microbus in a full-frontal crash at up to 50 km/h, the front panel, A-pillars and front sidewalls failed extensively in fibre compression and intrusion into the occupant space reached 208 mm at the front panel and 221 mm at the sidewall; front-panel stiffeners and changed foam core thicknesses improved occupant protection significantly for 35.6 kg of added structure.
- method: LS-DYNA explicit finite-element simulation with Chang-Chang composite failure criteria, as the study describes.
Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence · one source
Evidence: Pattaramon 2022 · Peer-reviewed
EstablishedSandwich composite monocoques (glass face sheets on foam or honeycomb) for lightweight bus bodies.
A lightweight bus body needs high strength-to-weight ratio, specific stiffness, fatigue resistance and energy absorption, for which sandwich composites have been used to design monocoque electric bus bodies: one reported design used E-glass/polypropylene face sheets on a polypropylene honeycomb core and saved 55 per cent of the weight of a metal-framed bus, and a 24-seat microbus was designed from glass fibre/epoxy face sheets on high-density polyurethane foam cores, with carbon fibre added where higher bending stiffness was needed.
- precision note: The 55 per cent weight saving is reported by the source from an earlier study that is not registered in this corpus.
Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence · one source
Evidence: Pattaramon 2022 · Peer-reviewed
Record last updated 2026-10-30. Corrections follow the published corrections policy; superseded claims are retained, never silently edited.