Design Optimization of Car Front Hood for Pedestrian Safety

Abstract

Nowadays many people deaths in the world were reported from vehicle traffic accidents that involved with pedestrian impact in higher percentage. This percentage may increase if there is no strong attention to the pedestrian safety from automakers and authorities. This study will focus on the analysis of pedestrian head impact on a car hood with different types of materials; also the hood thickness will be analysed with different measurements during the head test impact using the numerical simulation analysis which is available in ANSYS finite element software. The pedestrian head and front hood will be modelled using CAD software. Therefore the simulation will demonstrate the effects on the impact performance for each type of materials with different thickness used in this research. The observation from the numerical analysis showed that aluminium had high deformation as compared to steel and magnesium materials of hood. The steel had lowest deformation but it had higher equivalent stress when compared to aluminium and magnesium. Furthermore the lowest type of thickness produced high deformation and high equivalent stress value for each material type. In general each material had its own characteristic; therefore manufacturers can evaluate the lower material cost or design a safe front hood using the same material but with different thickness that suitable for pedestrian safety.