Crashworthiness/Safety Simulation
SAFETY FOR ALL VEHICLE PLATFORMS IN ALL SCENARIOS AT ALL SPEEDS

Over the last decade, crash test regulations have become more stringent, requiring a higher level of performance to achieve a good safety rating. For example, test speeds have been increased, and traditional automotive models were unable to handle this large amount of crash energy which lead to the collapse of the survival space and poor safety ratings. OEMs needed to increase the study of the structure, materials and restraint systems in order to achieve five star ratings again and this is where crashworthiness simulation plays a vital role.
High performance and high fuel economy are the two contradictory targets that push the automotive structure to the limit of a light-weight robust architecture. The arrival of newer vehicle platforms for electric, connected, and autonomous vehicles has shortened product design cycles. As regulations and OEM in-house safety targets tighten, the demand for crash simulations is increasing exponentially. There are many technical challenges in achieving the best crash safety ratings and getting regulatory approvals and high fidelity and accurate simulations are essential to obtaining an optimized solution. Abaqus/Explicit supports engineers in accomplishing the safety targets for all vehicle platforms, in all scenarios, and at all speeds.
A comprehensive end-to-end solution on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows OEMs to achieve a superior safety rating, and pass all regulatory requirements within a much shorter timeframe.
As hardware performance has improved, finite element (FE) models have become larger. Despite this increase in size, the pressure is on engineers to build the model in ever-shorter time frames. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform offers an easier way to build and manage large scale models. The platform integrates CAD, discretizing the geometry automatically using rules-based meshing in parallel multi-core machines. The automated meshing of a full body-in-white, which has up to 500 components, takes less than 2 hours with automatic mid-surface creation. It can save time by reusing meshed components if they are compatible, and by creating the spotweld using fastener information from CAD.
A vehicle crash is a highly nonlinear dynamic event. The simulation should be able to handle the three nonlinearities: geometry nonlinearity (large deformation), boundary nonlinearity (contact), and material nonlinearity (plasticity).
Abaqus provides a robust general contact, a large library of material models that may be applicable to the crash models, various methods of connections to assemble a large model, advanced analysis techniques particularly for the crash, ancillary products for regulation tests, occupant restraint system models and features for modeling kinematics of the moving components such as suspensions. Users may model the crash event with lesser abstraction and assumptions.
Abaqus/Explicit models the debeading of the tire from the wheel and the deflation, which are essential for a small overlap offset load case.
Read more about modeling tire burst.
Government regulations manage the crashworthiness of vehicles on the market. Non-government organizations, such as insurance organizations, also test and evaluate the vehicles and publish the results. All these tests have specific test procedures that require particular dummies and barriers. Abaqus provides detailed deformable finite element barriers of various kinds as well as dummy models which are corresponding to the regulations.
Dummies
Models available through www.humanetics.com
Technical Papers
- Abaqus BioRID-II Crash Dummy Model, Abaqus Technology Brief , TB-09-BIORID-1, Jan, 2009
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H. Hartman, M. Socko, T. Galesic, Using the Abaqus BioRID-II Dummy to operationally support the development of a Front Seat Structure, focusing Low Speed Rear Impacts – evaluating Whiplash Risks, 2008 Abaqus User’s Conference
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W. Li, J. Rasico, F. Zhu, M. Li, R. Kant, B. Aljundi, Development of Advanced H III Abaqus dummies, 2008 Abaqus User’s Conference
The size of crashworthiness models is growing and it is expected to reach between 20 and 40 million elements in 2020. Finer mesh models will be required to improve accuracy and to model with less abstraction. Crash scenarios beyond the regulation tests such as car-to-car crashes also push the model size higher. Abaqus/Explicit is always ahead of the trends in extending the capacity so the tested maximum for Release 2020 is a 59 Million element model.
SIMULIA continually works to optimize the consumption of memory and CPU cycles. With performance and accuracy being the core values of Abaqus/Explicit, increasing our customers’ productivity through faster simulations is key and our goal is to enable higher fidelity models and scale them to a large number of cores so that users can have the results overnight.
Abaqus/Explicit Large Model Scaling & Performance
# of cars |
DOF’s [M] |
# of ELEM [M] |
# of CPUs |
Speed increase from 2019 to 2020 |
8 | 229.0 | 39.2 | 280 |
17.5% |
560 |
10.6% |
|||
1120 |
15.5% |
|||
12 |
344.0 |
58.8 |
560 |
n/a |
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows for life-like visualizations of large data sets. This high-performance visualization uses parallelized multi-core systems and is much faster than Abaqus Viewer. The platform offers a move from engineering visualization to life-like, realistic renderings, allowing non-engineers to understand better the results that they are seeing.
This 3DEXPERIENCE High-Performance Visualization, or HPVIZ, is powered by a High-Performance Visualization Engine, which is dedicated to supporting large, realistic FE simulations. With HPVIZ, simulation data can be accessed by any user, on any platform, in any environment. Multi-domain analysis can also be explored. These life-like visualizations are an important development, as numerous individuals are involved in working with crashworthiness simulations, not just engineers. Experts and non-experts alike can understand and interact with these simulations for more effective collaboration and faster results.