Finite Element Analysis for the Impact of an Engine Hood to a Radiator Support Frame 2006-01-0311

The strength of a radiator support frame impacted by a free-falling engine hood was examined in the present study with the use of the 3-D finite element simulations. The entire engine room of a recreational vehicle was modeled for the analysis. In order to obtain a reasonable computation time, approaches for selecting an optimum element size and cleaning the unacceptable geometries in the CAD model were studied. The penetrations and perforations occurred in the finite element mesh were detected and solved by an efficient method. In addition, the proper use of hourglass control and mass scaling to reduce the computation time without losing the accuracy of the simulation was investigated. A theoretical model was also proposed in the present study to calculate the instantaneous angular velocity of the free-falling engine hood at the incipient impact to the radiator support frame, which was used in the simulation to further reduce the computation time. The constructed finite element model was validated by the experiments conducted in the present study.