Thickness determination of SMC replacing Sheet metals for Automobile roof

Sheet Molding Compound (SMC) is used in automobile body panels for weight reduction instead of sheet metal. As an alternative material SMC must fulfill the strength requirement as well as contribute less weight to Body-in-white (BIW). Hence, its thickness selection must be done strategically. In this paper, the degree of experiments (DOE) technique was used to determine the suitable thickness of SMC that can replace the traditional sheet metal roof in automobiles. In DOE technique, a bending test set up was created and tested by FE analysis on Abaqus and followed by lab testing as a part of validation.