Energy-based crashworthiness optimization for multiple vehicle impacts

In this paper, we use a full-scale finite element vehicle model of a 1996 Dodge Neon in simulating two types of vehicle crashes, offset-frontal and side impacts. Based on an analysis of the vehicle's histories of internal energy absorption under both impacts, we select twenty components as design variables in the optimization of the vehicle's weight without decreasing the vehicle's energy absorption capacity and energy absorption rate. We use the second-order polynomials in creating the metamodels for the response functions of energy absorption under both impacts. The optimization result shows a significant reduction on the total weight of the selected components. The LS-DYNA MPP v970 and a full-scale finite element vehicle model of 320,872 nodes and 577,524 elements are used in the simulations. A simulation of 100 ms offset-frontal impact takes approximately 17 hours with 36 processors on the IBM Linux SuperCluster, which has a total of 1038 Intel Pentium HI 1.266 GHz processors and 607.5 GB RAM. A simulation of 100 ms side impact takes approximately 29 hours with the same condition as the offset-frontal simulation.