Abstract
Keywords:Safety, FEM, Occupant, Side Impact, Optimization
This paper describes the development of design method for restraint systems considering scatter in multiple side impact test configurations. Side impact vehicle safety standard, FMVSS214, has been updated in 2007 and will be effective from 2009. Pole impact test configurations have been added and the SID dummy used for measurement in tests has been replaced with ES2re and SID2s dummies. As a result, the test configurations of FMVSS214 increase from 1 to 3, and the total number of side impact test configurations increase from 3 to 5, when including the two rating tests which are the IIHS side impact test and New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) side impact test. Therefore, developing a restraint system to meet the target injury indices in all test configurations becomes more complex. On the other hand, it is well-known that injury index values have scatter due to variation in parts and test conditions. Many optimization methods for side impact development of restraint systems considering the scatter have been reported. However, there have been no reports on multiple objective optimization methods considering scatter for various side impact configurations. The authors have developed a method for multiple objective optimization considering the scatter, based on response surface methodology, using a detailed side impact occupant injury FE model, which requires less computational effort and time. The developed method has been applied to the FMVSS214 pole side impact test and IIHS side impact test. The computational efforts and time are reduced significantly in comparison to current methods and it has been revealed from the results that the feasible design area that can meet the target injury indices of all tested configurations, considering scatter, is narrow. Therefore, it is a complex analysis to derive the optimal design using currently existing optimization methods in each configuration. Results of the crash test, which incorporated the optimal design obtained from the developed method showed that the developed method can be effective for designing restraint systems for multiple side impact test configurations.