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This article discusses steps to predictively estimate the responses of Anthropomorphic Test Device (ATD) in a side impact event, based on a Side Airbag (SAB) Force-Deformation (F-D) characteristics derived from the linear impactor test. A critical load management challenge that has been used to assess this predictive response process is the oblique pole impact test - part of the FMVSS 214 protocol. In this scenario, the ATD is assumed to have a free travel until it is stopped by the crushed and stacked up door against the rigid pole. Three critical energy management paths involved to manage the kinetic energy of the ATD at impact are assumed at the onset, namely, the door trim crush, ATD torso loading and most important efficient energy management of the SAB at a controlled force level. The SAB energy management is assumed critical and tied with the final response of the test ATD.

Superior NVH performance in vehicle design requires optimizing mount rates of a body-on-frame vehicle for various criteria like the rough road shake, noise and impact harshness & boom etc. These vehicle characteristics may necessitate trade-off studies, as they may require directionally opposite changes in the vehicle tuning. This paper deals with the trade-off between rough road-shake and impact harshness parameters optimized by tuning the mount characteristics. Simulation results indicating various response characteristics for rough road shake, noise and impact harshness & boom are monitored. A complete vehicle simulation model is used to perform mount optimization for road-shake and impact harshness. A condensed Component Mode Synthesis (CMS) model is used for scanning the design space with the help of DOE sampling techniques. These results are utilized by employing approximation techniques to create response surfaces.

This paper addresses the influence of variability resulting from mount / bushing rates and gages of major structural members to the vehicle shake response. Comparisons of two vehicles to study the concepts of reliability and robustness from vehicle shake perspective are presented. The relationship between vehicle tunability and robustness has been addressed. The First Order Second Moment (FOSM) method is used to provide an initial estimate of the variability or robustness of the design. The influence of body gages, body mount rates and suspension bushings, for two different modal management strategies, has been included. These studies have been compared with Monte Carlo Simulation using a dynamically condensed model. The influence of modal management as a key enabler to achieve a reliable NVH performance has been presented. Various factors influencing robustness in modal management and vehicle shake performance have been discussed.