The interior components of a passenger vehicle are designed to provide comfort and safety to its occupants. In the event of accident, vehicle interiors are primary source of injuries when occupants interact with them. Vehicle interiors consists of Instrument panel (IP), center console, seats and controls in front of seating position etc. Severity of the injuries depends on the energy dissipating characteristics, profiles, projections of different interior components. These are assessed by ECE R21 and IS12553 head form impact tests. To evaluate the Head form impact performance on Interior components, Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) simulations are extensively used during the vehicle development. In order to predict failure of plastic components and snap joints which might lead to expose sharp edges, it is critical to model plastic material and snap joint. Vehicle interiors are certified for head form impact requirements based on physical testing where dashboard samples from productions tools are used. At this stage of development, if any failure occurs then changes in interior design becomes very expensive and time consuming. To avoid this situation, CAE based failure predictions and injury performance evaluations are done during initial design phase of product development when changes are easily implemented without time and cost penalties.
This paper describes the development of vehicle interior using CAE based head form impact simulations and predicting the failures like sharp edges exposure, structural integrity or joint failures. For accurate prediction of these failures in CAE based vehicle interior development, plastic material characterization and snap joint failure characterization are done.