Full Vehicle Frontal Crash and Rollover Simulation Using Ls-Dyna3D and Experimental Validation

Knowing the human suffering and financial burden on the society due to vehicle accidents and legal requirements, it becomes necessary to study the crashworthiness of the vehicle. The experimental methods used for the crashworthiness analysis are very expensive and time consuming, also these methods are not feasible to study the different design alternatives at the developmental phase of the vehicle structure. In this aspect explicit finite element method plays an important role in the non-linear analysis of crashworthiness of vehicle.

The present paper describes the frontal barrier impact of a full vehicle finite element model using a nonlinear finite element code LS-DYNA3D. These FE results were compared with the experimental results and comparable patterns of deformations were observed.

An approximate finite element model is used to simulate a vehicle rollover. The main purpose of this simulation is to develop a methodology for rollover simulation. Two rollover simulations were carried out in first simulation, the vehicle structure was treated as a finite element body throughout the simulation time. And in second simulation material switching technique to switch deformable material to rigid and rigid to deformable, depending on the floor contact, was used to reduce the total CPU time. Both rollover simulations were carried out for three seconds.