Search Results

Steering column and steering wheel are critical safety components in vehicle interior environment. Steering system needs to be designed to absorb occupant impact energy in the event of crash thereby reducing the risk of injury to the occupant. This is more critical for non-airbag vehicle versions. To evaluate the steering system performance, Body block impact test is defined in IS11939 standard [1]. Nowadays for product development, CAE is being extensively used to reduce development cycle time and minimize number of prototypes required for physical validation. In order to design the steering system to meet the Body Block performance requirements, a detailed FE model of Body Block impactor is required. The static stiffness and moment of inertia of body block are defined in SAE J244a [2]. The reference data available in SAE J244a is not sufficient to develop a Body Block model that would represent the physical impactor.

Aluminum alloy wheels are being widely used in the automotive industry since the last decade due to its superior styling and performance. Alloy wheel rim is one of the critical components and plays an important role in a frontal crash scenario. The wheel rim failure prediction in safety simulation is essential to ensure robust safety performance. Determining failure characteristics of an alloy wheel poses many difficulties considering its brittle nature, porosity and inhomogeneity in material properties across different regions of wheel rim due to mold design, cooling rate and other process parameters of the low-pressure die casting process. This paper describes the modelling and simulation methodology developed to predict accurate wheel behavior. The methodology addresses two distinct areas of challenges such as alloy wheel rim failure prediction and associated tire blow out.