Robustness optimization for vehicular crash simulations

Over the past 10 years (1990-2000), the computer analysis of vehicle crashworthiness has become a powerful and effective tool, reducing the cost and time to market of new vehicles that meet corporate and government crash safety requirements. Crash simulation is fundamentally computation-intensive, and it requires fast and powerful supercomputers to ensure reasonable turnaround time for the analyses. Because the explicit FE method is computationally efficient, researchers generally prefer it for crash simulation. Explicit FE codes are available from several third-party mechanical computer aided engineering (CAE) software vendors, and the major automotive manufacturers, including Ford Motor Company, use them for crash simulation. The article focuses on how this technology has been extended to perform design optimization and robustness assessment.