Current passenger cars offer an assemblage of complex systems for the protection of occupants in different accident configurations. The adaptivity of the systems will widen in the future, i. e. the systems will be adapted to offer optimized and increased protection for different occupant classes during serious crash situations. This will lead to an augmentation of system complexity. Only through an intensive application of CAE based methods is one able to a) chose the appropriate system components and b) assess and optimize the interaction of the latter to fulfill the requirements.

The competence of developing and assessing new features is one of the core tasks of car manufacturers. To satisfy this demand, Audi and Volkswagen started the KISS (key competence integrative safety systems) project. The main goal of KISS is to increase the development and assessment competence of occupant restraint systems throughout the complete development process, which consists of the actual vehicle, the occupants, the restraint systems, sensors, airbag control unit and the algorithm which is implemented to control the deployment of protective measures.

Because KISS kicks in at the very beginning of the development process when essential properties are yet to be defined and boundary conditions are still fluid (e. g. package, system architecture,...), KISS is able to lay the groundwork for an effective and – concerning its complexity – controllable occupant restraint system. Along with conventional car and occupant simulations FEM crash simulations can also be increasingly used for the optimized placement of crash sensors and the computation of sensor signals. Using modern mathematical methods of signal classification, these signals are utilized to generate a first implementation of a crash classifying algorithm. Using stochastical and statistical methods the robustness of a solution can be assessed in a qualified way long before hardware for tests is actually available.