Abstract
The experimental method used in a frontal crash of cars costs much time and expense. Therefore, numerical simulation in crashworthiness is widely applied in the world. The completed car models contain a lot of parts which provided complicated structure, especially the rear of car models do not contribute to behavior of frontal crash which usually evaluates injuries of pedestrian or motorcyclist. In order to save time and resources, a simplification of the car models for research simulations is essential with the goal of reducing approximately 50% of car model elements and nodes. This study aims to construct the finite element models of front structures of vehicle based on the original finite element models. Those new car models must be maintained important values such as mass and center of gravity position. By using condition boundaries, inertia moment is kept unchanged on new model. The original car models, which are provided by the National Crash Analysis Center (NCAC), validated by using results from experimental crash tests. The modified (simplistic) vehicle FE models are validated by comparing simulation results with experimental data and simulation results of the original vehicle finite element models. LS-Dyna software provides convenient tools and very strong to modify finite element model. There are six car models reconstructed in this research, including 1 Pick-up, 2 SUV and 3 Sedan. Because car models were not the main object to evaluate in a crash, energy and behavior of frontal part have the most important role. As a result, six simplified car models gave reasonable outcomes and reduced significantly the number of nodes and elements. Therefore, the simulation time is also reduced a lot. Simplified car models can be applied to the upcoming frontal simulations.
Highlights
The frontal car crash is one of the most well-known tests in the automotive safety industry and the finite element method (FEM) is widely used to simulate this kind of test
The completed car models contain a lot of parts which provided complicated structure, especially the rear of car models do not contribute to behavior of frontal crash which usually evaluates injuries of pedestrian or motorcyclist
The original car models, which are provided by the National Crash Analysis Center (NCAC), validated by using results from experimental crash tests
Summary
The frontal car crash is one of the most well-known tests in the automotive safety industry and the finite element method (FEM) is widely used to simulate this kind of test. The simulation, or virtual test, is useful in fastening the development process and in helping to reduce expenditure. In this simulation, the numerical model of a vehicle is given an initial velocity to bump into a constrained solid wall. All the theory and modeling method developed in this research are applied for creating simplified models. Both the simplified and detailed models are used for crashworthiness analyses, results show that the errors caused by the simplified models are fewer than 10% and the simplified models only take less than 10% of the computer time of the corresponding detailed models.
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