Abstract
Recently the Obama administration announced to establish a harmonized National Program to improve vehicle fuel economy and lower greenhouse gas emissions. The auto industry will be required to ramp up production of more fuel-efficient vehicles on a much tighter timeline than originally envisioned.
Small car, by virtue of its size and weight, is considered to be one of the solutions to improve fuel economy. Occupant protection and Crashworthiness performance is considered to be one of the challenges in the design of a small car. Lightweight materials with increased energy absorption capabilities are the most direct enablers to achieve safety performance without affecting mass and fuel efficiency. Additionally, Supplemental Inflatable Restraint Technologies are some of the solutions that promise to improve the occupant protection. On the administrative front “Global Technical Regulations” (GTR) are being designed to introduce a world safety standards. Also today‟s automobile design requires the adoption of alternate fuels (LPG/CNG) and electric vehicles during development.
Advancements in high-performance computing and in nonlinear dynamic structural simulation have made it possible to virtually test potential designs prior to building and testing expensive prototypes. Multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) techniques are being used to simultaneously manipulate variables in several disciplines to achieve more effective solutions. This ensures us to meet the mass, fuel efficiency targets without compromising on performance. This paper discusses some of the above mentioned technologies to accomplish safety measures in small cars.
Keywords: Small Car, Multi Disciplinary Optimization, Crashworthiness Performance, Fuel Economy, Alternate Fuel Vehicles, Emerging Market.