CORA+: an objective rating method for the pedestrian protection leg impact

Abstract

Numerical simulation is an important tool in the development process of vehicles in order to predict the passive vehicle safety extensively. Based on simulation results, physical tests are carried out to evaluate critical points. The validity of numerical simulations is analysed by objective rating methods. Predominantly CORA (Correlation and Analysis) is used to compare the similarity of response time histories between simulation and physical test. In pedestrian protection, the peaks of the response time histories measured during the test are the injury criteria values. Additionally, the risk of injury is determined by these peak values. However, response time histories are found to be rated inadequately by CORA because this method is not emphasising on peak values. We investigate Flexible Pedestrian Legform Impactor (FlexPLI) and advanced Pedestrian Legform Impactor (aPLI) data with different CORA parameter settings in order to achieve adequate ratings. Thereby, we try to focus on the peak values of the curves while keeping the parameter variation as objective as possible. Further, we show a heuristic approach by adding peak value deviation as an additional element to the CORA metric – so called CORA+.