Improved Energy Absorber and Vehicle Design Strategies for Pedestrian Protection

This paper presents the effect of finite element analysis (FEA) model improvements to better correlate predictive analyses to pedestrian protection lower leg impact tests. The FEA analysis model prediction is now within 10% of the tested values for tibia deceleration, knee bending angle and knee shear. By using this improved FEA model, new, more efficient energy absorber and vehicle front end design strategies can been developed. A numerical approach to optimizing vehicle front end structures is presented.