Abstract:
Design optimization for crashworthiness improvement is one of the most difficult to solve engineering design problems. The difficulty stems from the extremely high computational cost associated with the highly nonlinear finite element models used for simulating the sophisticated crash behaviour of structural components. This paper presents a practical and an efficient methodology for solving such problems. The methodology combines nonlinear finite element analysis, response surface method, design of experiments and numerical optimization. The methodology is applied to improve the crashworthiness performance of the S-rail, which plays a very important role in absorbing most of the impact energy in frontal collisions. The results demonstrate the capability and potential of this methodology in optimizing the crashworthiness design of vehicle structures.