Abstract
In the event of a crash involving a motor vehicle, a car seat with its backrest and head support can increase the level of passenger safety. However, the filling material used in the seat and the head support should absorb a large proportion of the kinetic energy associated with the moving passenger during the crash. This filling material is usually made of polyurethane foam. To simulate the behaviour of the seat assembly during a crash the material characteristics of the seat-filling foam should be appropriately modelled. For this purpose, a low-density-foam material model was developed for the finite element analysis. The paper will present an innovative method for estimating the parameters of the low-density-foam material model that is based on a differential ant-stigmergy algorithm. First the differential ant-stigmergy algorithm will be described, which will be followed by its application on the real case. The results will be discussed and the field of application will be presented.
Keywords Car seat, crash test, finite elements, simulation, differential ant-stigmergy algorithm.