Vehicle interiors are primary source of injuries when occupants interact with them in the event of an accident. The extent of injuries depending on energy dissipating characteristics of interiors and severity of accidents. Vehicle interiors energy dissipating characteristics are assessed by IS15223 and ECE R21 head form impact tests. [1,2] Head form impact test assesses occupant protection by the vehicle interiors during head impact on vehicle interiors in frontal collision accident scenarios.
The present paper describes CAE based approach for cockpit / dashboard development for head form impact requirements. In the conventional approach, dashboard design is certified for head form requirements based on physical testing where dashboard samples from production tools are used [1,2]. At this stage if any failure occurs, the changes in the dashboard design becomes very expensive and time consuming as tooling is already made. To avoid this scenario during product development phase CAE based dashboard design is proposed in this paper. The proposed CAE based approach helps to assess and correct the proposed dashboard design in early phase of product development, to avoid likely failures during the physical testing.
This paper describes the details of dashboard assembly FE model content, various material models and simulation procedures for CAE based dashboard development for head form impact requirements. It is observed that a well discretized FE model and appropriate material models for plastics reasonably predicts physical test behavior of the dashboard assembly in head form impact tests.