Engineering carbon fiber composite material structures for high performance road cars and racing cars

Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) materials have been extensively used in the motor racing industry since a few decades and they are becoming more and more common in the automotive industry as well , especially in the super cars market.
Designers can invent not only new shapes but new materials as well , playing with the combination of many different materials, each time they work on a new car. A deep understanding of the materials’ properties and of the physical phenomenon is fundamental to optimize the use of these material.
This paper describes the Dallara approach to the engineering of CFRP materials with a particular focus on the dynamic impact simulation.