Development of Safe Child Restraints System for FMVSS 225 Using CAE

Federal Motor Safety Standard (FMVSS) 225 establishes requirements for child restraint anchorage systems to ensure their proper location and strength for the effective securing of child restraints, to reduce the likelihood of the anchorage systems failure and to increase the likelihood that child restraints are properly secured and thus more fully achieve their potential effectiveness in motor vehicles.

Current CAE simulations are focused on evaluating localized structural strength by applying the loads as vectors to the child tether anchorages to approximate the loading. This method cannot be used to determine the displacement requirements of child tether that was added recently to FMVSS 225 specifications. A new CAE procedure that takes into account the effect of seat structure and belt system has been developed and successfully applied to truck programs. This paper discusses in detail the CAE simulation of the FMVSS 225 test for checking the child tether anchorages structural integrity and displacements of load application point on child seat fixture.