Towards the understanding of material property influence on automotive crash structures

Developing general crashworthiness guidelines for the design engineer is a complex task. This study begins to show that large parameter studies using actual vehicle models may prove fruitful in this endeavor. For the midrail component and the vehicle side structure studied, an initial generalized guideline developed is as follows: for a specific stress, a 10% change in thickness results in a 14% change in energy absorption for a specific thickness, a 10% change in stress results in a 7% change in energy absorption. These results are relative to baseline models, and are limited to the practical range of thickness and stress of actual vehicle components. Although the analyst must strive for precise solutions, the benefit of generalizing behavior for the design engineer must also be recognized.