An Automated Head Impact Development for Automobile Instrument Panel Application 2016-01-1370

During the course of automobile Instrument Panel (IP) design development, the occupant head impact CAE simulation on IP are routinely performed to validate FMVSS201 requirements. Based on FMVSS201 requirements, the potential head impact zones on the IP are first identified. Then, the head impact zones are used to locate the various target points that must be impacted on IP. Once the critical target locations on IP are chosen, there are several computational steps that are required to calculate impact angles and head form (HF) center of rotation in reference to target points. Then, CAE engineer performs a repetitive process that involves positioning each individual HF with proper impact angle, assigning initial velocity to HF, and defining surface contacts within the finite element model (FEM). To simplify these lengthy manual steps, a commercially available software HyperMesh® CAE software tool is used to automate these steps. The automation scripting tool is based on TCL programming. The automated tool will generate head impact FE model for all selected target points and ready for submission to the solver. The new automation process also generates report automatically with significant analyst time saving and increasing productivity. In addition, the automation approach would help to create consistent repeatable method by eliminating or minimizing human errors. In this paper a correlation study between the CAE HF automation process and manual setup as well as actual physical test results will be discussed.