Magic Cube approach application on crashworthiness design of front rail in front angle impact

This paper is concerned with crashworthiness design of a front rail on a vehicle chassis frame structure considering crash direction uncertainty. Front rail as a main energy absorption component in front impact, may perform low energy-absorption deformation in front angle impact, such as global bending collapse. Magic Cube approach (MQ), a systematic design approach, is conducted to analyze the design problem: by applying time and space decomposition, a subsystem-to-component model is developed, which simplified the design domains; by using topology optimization method, a new front rail is designed under inclined loading, which saves 29% material. Numerical simulation is carried out with LS-DYNA in order to compare the crashworthiness of two designs (new front rail and rectangle cross-section front rail). The result shows that new front rail has better adaptability of uncertain loading directions than original rectangle cross-section front rail and crashworthiness design process should consider the oblique loading direction.