A Study of Small MPV Car Structures to Reduce Injury Values In EEVC Side Impact Test Procedures

Since the European Experimental Vehicle Committee(EEVC) has proposed new side impact procedure, car designers should consider improving crashworthiness not only for the NHTSA side impact but also for the new European side impact. The two test procedures totally differ in test methods and injury values to measure. Therefore structural design concept must be different from each other. This paper presents a computer simulation of small MPV passenger car structure and occupant in the European side impact. A study of small MPV car structure is performed to reduce the injury values. Full vehicle dynamic simulation is done by LS-DYNA3D on Cray T-94. Intrusion velocities and deformations of door and center pillar are considered as performance factors of the structures to understand any relations with the injuries. From the result we have proposed the several structural design concepts of small MPV to meet the European side impact reguration and to improve Euro-NCAP side impact score.