Side Impact Crash Worthiness Structure Improve Under American Standard

As one of the three themes of automobile in the future, vehicle safety receivedwidespread concern of both governments and consumers and high-level attention ofautomobile enterprises. The side impact safety is an important component of vehiclesafety and its damage is also second only to the frontal impact. Researching on the sideimpact safety is essential. Along with the economic take-off, China’s automobileindustry achieved great progress. Both production levels and yields increasedsignificantly. Whereas the export is not so prosperous, as a result, the automobileenterprises are faced with an increasingly fierce competition. It’s imperative to researchmodels aimed at the oversea markets. The FEM of a self-brand vehicle was formed andthe finite element analysis was conducted based on NHTSA-NCAP. Then the structureimprove was made to satisfy the command of oversea markets, for purpose of laying afoundation for sustainable development ofChina’s automobile industry.The testing and protection criteria in MDB side impact of NHTSA-NCAP,IIHS-NCAP, Euro-NCAP, J-NCAP and C-NCAP were researched. The test results ofrecent years were counted up and scores of different vehicle types were analyzed.Strain rate should be treated prudently when FEM was used in high speed crashanalysis. So high speed material testing was conducted and test data was processed. Thematerials cards that can be used in FEA were got to find they were very different fromthose got from quasi-static testing.Specific requirements on geometry cleaning and element criteria were proposed,some common material models, property models and connection models wereresearched, accelerometers were formed and their information was exported, theboundary condition and control cards were set based on NHTSA-NCAP, finally theFEM of the whole vehicle was established. After calculation of FEM using LS-DYNA,the outcome of energy was analyzed. The variation trends of kinetic energy, internalenergy, hourglass energy were ideal, so the FEM was proved to be correct. Also, bothintrusion speed of the inner B-pillar and intrusion of the inner B-pillar and inner doorpanel were basically the same as those of the real tests. Again, the FEM was proved tobe accurate and reliable.The B-pillar, side door bar，seat beam and threshold were improved from structureand material. Theintrusion of the inner B-pillar and inner door panel decreased in theoptimization scheme. Consequently, the crashworthiness of side impact was promoted.