Auto Instrument Panel Design With Numerical Simulation And Physical Test Based On Occupant Head Safety

Safety, environment-friendliness and fuel-economy are the main direction of modern vehicle technology development. And vehicle safety becomes the most concern due to its closest relation to human life, which is usually thought to be the abilities of preventing crash accident, or reducing losses when accident happens inevitably. Generally speaking, there are active safety and passive safety for vehicle safety. According to the statistics of traffic accidents, active safety, which aims at preventing accidents from happening, can only avoid 5 percent of the total accidents. Therefore, research on improving the passive safety of vehicle is becoming more and more urgent.Research focused on the developmental research of the decorations in the cab, and auto instrument panel is chosen to be the main concern of the research. By virtue of the finite element simulation tool, a mount of effort has been put on to study the damage limit and the mechanical respond characteristics when the occupant head impacts the instrument panel. Applying the finite element software PAM-CRASH, the simulation results indicate not only the energy absorbed by the instrument panel but also the dynamic response when the occupant head impact the panel.The main research and results included:(1) Paper study the structure concept design method of the auto instrument panel and the common chosen material and manufacture crafts; the regulations of the instrument panel and occupant head impact are compared and analyzed afterwards. (2) Building auto instrument panel and occupant head FEM model with the help of finite element software PAM-CRASH, and then the proper constrains according to the related regulation.(3) Simulation results indicate the characteristics of auto instrument panel and occupant head impact, and the respond characteristics of which are well understood. The research provides a guide direction for the instrument panel structure design.(4) Verifying simulation results with physical tests. The finite element simulation method is proved to be effective in guiding the structure design of auto instrument panel and improving the passive safety performance. On the basis of the finite element simulation, the structure optimization is then put forward in the development of high quality auto instrument panels.