A Procedure for Validation of a Full e-Vehicle CAE Model with Physical Tests for Passive Safety Applications

With the fast development of computational analysis tools and capacities during the past ten years, complex and substantial computer-aided engineering (CAE) simulations are now economically possible. While the cost of crash tests has risen steadily, the fidelity and complexity, which numerical simulations could address, has multiplied keeping the cost of computational analysis more stable. The fundamental goal of CAE is to achieve significant reduction in the number of physical tests conducted during the product development process. However, validating the CAE model with physical tests is essential to ensure accuracy and reliability. Simulations performed using a validated CAE model could be used to make decisions like airbag deployment or high voltage shutdown without an actual physical test being conducted. This paper discusses validating an electric commercial vehicle CAE model during a side impact thus emphasizing the safety of a high voltage battery system. The critical parameters considered for fine-tuning the CAE model are discussed. The qualitative comparison looks at global displacement of the vehicle, local deformations and failure of the structural components. The acceleration time histories measured from different locations of the test vehicle are compared with the same obtained from the CAE simulation for quantitative correlation. While most of the quantitative comparison metrics are limited to time domain, this paper discusses a time, frequency and time-frequency domain comparison of the acceleration curves measured from test and CAE. The qualitative and quantitative comparison of the results shows the correlation level of the CAE simulation with the physical test outcome.