Crash simulation methods for vehicle development at Nissan

Futamata, Tatsuya; Okuyama, Hiroyuki; Takahashi, Nobuhiko

Affiliations

Abstract

For vehicle frontal crash simulation, Nissan has been using a relatively simple lumped mass-spring simulation combined with an in-house frame crash program CRAFT. However, it has been recognized that this procedure does not always have capability to simulate frontal crash responses for vehicle structural design changes directly. Thus, as an alternative to this conventional method, a commercial nonlinear dynamic finite element program PAM-CRASH have introduced and researched to simulate vehicle crash characteristics using that program run on a super computer.

A step-by-step approach was taken to simulate a test vehicle crash response staning with its front side rail crash simulation, and finally, the simulated deceleration of the test vehicle was successfully correlated with its actual crash test result.

The major issues to be solved in our further study will be model simplification and application of this simulation method to various types of test vehicles.

Cited Works (1)

Year	Entry
1987	Matsushita K, Morita S. Relationship between vehicle front-end stiffness and dummy injury during collisions. In: Proceedings of the 11th International Technical Conference on Experimental Safety Vehicles (ESV). May 12-15, 1987; Washington, DC.529-537.

Cited By (2)

Year	Entry
2003	Jiang T, Grzebieta RH, Rechnitzer G, Richardson S, Zhao XL. Review of car frontal stiffness equations for estimating vehicle impact velocities. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 19-22, 2003; Nagoya, Japan.
1991	Inagaki A, Takahashi N, Tohyama A, Ohtomo A. A resolution of side impact phenomena by means of dynamic nonlinear FEM simulation and a study of vehicle body construction. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Technical Conference on Experimental Safety Vehicles (ESV). November 4-7, 1991; Paris, France.560-567.