Side Structure Sensitivity to Passenger Car Crashworthiness DONG Guang (董光) WANG Dazhi (王大志).pdf

TSINGHUA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ISSN 1007-0214 09/18 pp290-295 Volume 12, Number 3, June 2007 Side Structure Sensitivity to Passenger Car Crashworthiness During Pole Side Impact DONG Guang (董 光), WANG Dazhi (王大志), ZHANG Jinhuan (张金换)**, HUANG Shilin (黄世霖) State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China Abstract: Side impact accidents of passenger cars with fixed poles may result in severe injuries to the vehi- cle occupants. In this paper, side structure intrusion was considered as the criterion for passenger cars crashworthiness during side impact with a pole. The relationship between side intrusions and the side struc- ture stiffness was analyzed. The acceleration of the unstruck side vehicle body was selected as the criterion for studying the influence of different side structure components on the side structure stiffness during pas- senger car pole side impacts. The behavior was analyzed using finite element simulations. The results show that the rocker and the lower part of the B-pillar are the key parts of the side structures in determining the passenger car side stiffness. Passenger car pole side impact crashworthiness is, therefore, most sensitive to these two components. Key words: passenger car; pole side impact; crashworthiness; finite element simulation consequently the occupants sit almost within the crash Introduction zone, which often results in severe injuries[6]. Research