Vehicle Crash Configuration Modeling for Occupant Excursion Screening
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods for assessing vehicle safety performance lack the detail needed to describe subtle changes in crash configurations, particularly in the interaction between collision avoidance and injury prevention systems, and are computationally intensive, making it difficult to simulate pre-crash maneuvers effectively.
Innovation Solution
A computer-aided engineering (CAE) methodology that receives real-world data and simulates impact events using a simplified occupant kinetics model and structural simulations to quantify the combined effect of collision avoidance and injury prevention features, filtering out cases where occupant pre-crash position excursion exceeds a threshold, and using a parametric crash configuration definition to link pre-crash and crash simulations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If detailed finite element human body models are used to simulate pre-crash maneuvers, then measurement precision of occupant position transfer is improved, but computational time and resource requirements increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The simulation process is divided into two distinct stages: (1) a simplified occupant kinetics model is used for initial screening of numerous crash scenarios to identify critical cases, and (2) detailed finite element human body models are applied only to the filtered critical cases. This segmentation allows the majority of computations to use the efficient simplified model while ensuring accurate detailed analysis is performed only where necessary, thus resolving the contradiction between precision and computational time.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of applying the computationally intensive finite element models to all crash scenarios, the invention applies them partially only to the subset of critical cases identified by the simplified model. This partial action approach maintains measurement precision for the most important cases while avoiding the excessive computational burden of analyzing every scenario with high-fidelity models.
2Reliability
If a comprehensive simulation method evaluating both collision avoidance and injury prevention systems is implemented, then safety assessment completeness is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The invention merges two previously separate assessment approaches (collision avoidance evaluation and injury prevention evaluation) into a single integrated simulation framework. By combining the simplified occupant kinetics model with the finite element human body models in a unified process that evaluates both system types together, the invention achieves comprehensive safety assessment while managing complexity through the use of the simplified model for initial analysis.
Solution Approach 2:
The simplified occupant kinetics model performs preliminary analysis of crash scenarios before the detailed finite element models are engaged. This preliminary action identifies which scenarios require comprehensive analysis, allowing the complex injury prevention evaluation to be focused only on relevant cases rather than all possible scenarios, thus improving completeness while controlling overall system complexity.
3Productivity
If simplified occupant kinetics models are used for filtering cases, then productivity of crash scenario analysis is improved, but measurement precision of occupant position transfer decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The analysis process is segmented into two quality levels: the simplified occupant kinetics model provides lower-precision but high-speed analysis for initial case filtering, while the finite element human body models provide high-precision analysis for the final evaluation of critical cases. This segmentation allows productivity to be maximized in the screening phase while ensuring measurement precision is maintained in the final assessment phase.
Data Source
AI summary
A methodology, including: receiving first input related to expected states of a vehicle and another vehicle or object at impact event initiation with positions, orientations, and velocities as parameters used for impact event evaluation; receiving second input related to expected vehicle occupant position and position transfer during a pre-impact event maneuver; and simulating an impact event involving the vehicle and the another vehicle or object using both the first input and the second input to quantify the performance of a safety system of the vehicle with a combined effect from a collision avoidance feature and an injury prevention feature. The method further includes filtering out a case where a vehicle occupant pre-crash position excursion is expected to exceed a predetermined threshold.