Failure Correlation and CAE Based Design Development for Seat Belt Anchorage as per AIS-015

For the purpose of effective occupant restraint, seat belt anchorage test is devised to prevent any failure at the anchorage locations during vehicle crash. In India Seat Belt Anchorages (SBA) certification test is mandatory for M and N types of category vehicles with regards to forward and rearward facing seats in the vehicle.

During the development phase failure at seat anchorage location was observed in physical test, which resulted in vehicle not meeting the regulatory requirement. This phenomenon of anchorage failure was captured through Finite Element (FE) simulations and correlation was done to understand the root cause of failure for future development. Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) based design proposals were developed by considering various parameters which influence the load path and force distribution at seat belt and seat anchorage locations. This paper talks about a detailed study done to estimate effects of variation in design, material and thickness properties at anchorage locations. After various feasibility checks, an optimized FE driven design has been considered for physical testing and was successfully validated with good correlation. Furthermore, during the study it was found that material plays a critical role for selection of anchorage component. It was also noticed that proper loading and constraint in FE model plays very important role to have accurate result and better correlation between physical test and CAE results. This study helped in reducing the project development cost, time and efforts needed for physical testing.