The low speed impact tests outlined in ECE R42 and FMVSS 581 consist of multiple consecutive impacts on a vehicle bumper to assess vulnerability to damage and repairability. Typical CAE approaches to assessing multi-stage analyses involve running each stage of the analysis individually, inputting deformations, stresses, and strains from the end of the previous analysis. This approach typically requires manual model editing before each analysis, which is time consuming and increases the risk of human error.
Finite element (FE) vehicle models allow researchers to conduct diverse simulation studies. Members of the Center for Collision Safety and Analysis (CCSA) at the George Mason University (GMU), that also built the core team of the formerly known National Crash Analysis Center (NCAC), have been developing a fleet of publicly available FE vehicle models [1] over the past 25 years. This paper describes the latest model, representing a 2020 Nissan Rogue SUV vehicle, shown in Figure 1. Note that the vehicle has been named as the Nissan X-Trail in all countries it is sold, except for the United States and Canada, where it called Nissan Rogue.
In 2024 the monitoring phase of the virtual far side occupant assessment is going to start. The vehicle manufacturer will carry out the physical sleds and virtual tests. Variations of the impact angle and the seat position are going to be assessed with purely virtual tests. The car manufacturer has to show that the correlation level of his simulation model is sufficient. For that the ISO score rating according to ISO/TS18571 and the selected ATD (‘dummy’) injury criteria are used on the two validation tests. To be prepared for this challenge, Stellantis put together a cross functional, international CAE team of methods development and safety department members. The task was to test if the existing model content and the level of detail in the subsystems fulfill all performance requirements and to identify the key enablers to reach the correlation targets.
Currently, Euro NCAP announced a virtual test to improve safety performance robustness. Starting with the Far-side sled test, robustness will be evaluated at different angles and seat positions. Since robustness is evaluated only by simulation, it is crucial to improve the accuracy of the model. Therefore, the objective of this study is to verify the model accuracy level by comparing the simulation with the far-side SLED test with airbag as a benchmark for the virtual test.
Multi-stage Analysis Approach to Low Speed Vehicle Impacts using the *SENSOR Keywords