Energy Absorber Developments and Correlation for Lower Leg Pedestrian Impact

In order to reduce vehicle costs, OEM's are trying to design vehicle components which can be used globally and meet global requirements. Pedestrian impact is one of the requirements that will become a global requirement in the near future. Automotive bumpers are the primary components that directly affect the lower leg pedestrian impact event. Therefore the automotive bumper suppliers are in a competition to create innovative energy absorbers to meet the pedestrian impact standards. This paper describes the developments of automotive bumper systems to meet the pedestrian requirements through DOE and RSM methodologies using CAE and correlating the proposed energy absorbers to the actual physical tests. It compares various manufacturing methods and then proposes an optimized, low cost manufacturing method. It also describes the performance of some vehicles currently in production for these tests.