Search Results

Growing demand for fuel-efficient or light weight vehicle has become a challenge for vehicle development. Upfront engineering process provides more opportunities for engineers to improve body weight efficiency. To accelerate the upfront body development process, the parametric concept modeling technology is commonly employed to generate parametric three-dimensional geometry, joints, modular components, concept welding, and finite element meshes. The topology optimization which determines the best structural layout without weight penalty has also been used during the conceptual design stage. The objective of this research is to explore the feasibility of integrating the advanced parametric concept modeling and both topology optimization and structural optimization technologies into upfront body architecture development process.

In vehicle safety engineering, it is important to determine the severity of occupant injury during a crash. Computer simulations are widely used to study how occupants move in a crash, what they collide during the crash and thus how they are injured. The vehicle motion is typically defined for the occupant simulation by specifying a crash pulse. Many computer models used to analyze occupant kinematics do not calculate both vehicle motion and occupant motion at the same time. This paper presents a framework of response surface methodology for the crash pulse prediction and vehicle structure design optimization. The process is composed of running simulation at DOE sampling data points, generating surrogate models (response surface models), performing sensitivity analysis and structure design optimization for time history data (e.g., crash pulse).

This paper focuses on the development of a framework of nonlinear finite element model validation for vehicle crash simulation. Integrated computational and test-based methods were discussed for validating computational models under physical, informational and model uncertaintes. Several methods were investigated to quantify transient time-domain data (functional data). The concept of correlation index was proposed to determine the degree to which a model is an accurate representation of the real world from the perspective of the intended uses of the model. The methodologies developed in this paper can also be used for CAE model updating, parameter tuning, and model calibration.