Computer analysis for side impact occupant protection

In order to assist in providing effective protection for the occupants in a side impact collision, the crash phenomena must be understood. This understanding assists the effort to control the deformation mode, intrusion velocity, and the like of each section of the vehicle to the extent possible. For that purpose, computer analysis is very effective in that it allows investigation of data which is difficult to segregate by crash testing. Among side impact test types, this paper deals with the European regulation ECE95. For simulation the PAM-CRASH finite element code was used. First, in the case of analyzing the side impact with computer, it is explained that it is important to install finite element (FE) dummy model by comparing three simulation results, without dummy model, with rigid body dummy model and with FE dummy model. Next, two cases of simulations that had differences in side structure strengths were carried out, with FE dummy model. The crash tests and simulations of the two cases were compared. In these results, it was found that the simulation results were reasonably well correlated to the vehicle crash test results within the parameters studied. [A] For the covering abstract, see IRRD 896528.