Citation

Christensen J, Bastien C, Blundell MV. Int. J. Crashworthiness 2012; 17(1): 29-38.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/13588265.2011.625640

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of variations in modelling of roof crush loading scenarios upon topology and mass of a body in white (BIW) for a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV). These variations incorporated the proposed changes to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) 216 standard. The base model used for the investigation in this paper was based upon a series of optimisation studies. The overall purpose was to minimise the BIW mass of an HEV subjected to multiple crash scenarios including high-speed front impact, offset deformable barrier (ODB), side impact, pole impact, high-speed rear impact and low-speed rear impact in addition to a roof crush scenario. For the purpose of achieving this goal, finite element (FE) topology optimisation was employed. Owing to the limitations of present-day FE optimisation software, all models utilised linear static load cases. In addition, all models made use of inertia relief (IR) boundary conditions. With the above approach, the BIW topology was investigated.