In the development of Saab cars, passenger safety is of the greatest concem. To verify the safety level achieved a large number of destructive crash tests are carried out. Each of these test is time-consuming and costly. It is of interest to Saab, as well as the whole community of car manufacturers, to reduce the number of crash tests, and yet to achieve the target level of passengers afety. Computational mechanics has turned into a powerful tool which can complement crash tests and, furthermore, reduce the number of tests needed.
Recently, Saab has developed a finite element model of the Saab 9000 T16 CS car. The calculated results show good agreement with available test data and also reveal crash phenomena which are hard to observe in the standard destructive physical tests.
Computational analysis of crash problems is the new method of developing cars with higher passenger safety. Once developed and validated, the finite element crash model can be utilized for design studies or parametric studies and needs only a very short time to produce useful results. Thus, within a given time a larger number of design altematives can be evaluated and a final design with higher passenger safety can be obtained.