Abstract
Thermoplastic knee bolsters are being developed utilizing CAE techniques for a range of vehicle platforms to replace traditional knee bolsters which typically contain corrugated metal plates. This paper describes how CAE tools can be systematically used in to design and engineer a thermoplastic knee bolster. Emphasis is placed on describing the role of the material models, finite element discretization, bolster stiffness optimization and knee bolster interaction with the surrounding instrument panel (IP) structure. Also, the processing of the plastic knee bolster components needs to be simulated to optimize the molds and processing parameters to obtain the best possible structural performance of the plastic material.