Multi-objective optimization of vehicle crashworthiness using a new particle swarm based approach

Vehicle crashworthiness is an important issue to ensure passengers safety and reduce vehicle costs in the early design stage of vehicle design. The aim of the crashworthiness design is to provide an optimized structure that can absorb the crash energy by controlled vehicle deformations while maintaining enough space of the passenger compartment. Meta-modeling and optimization techniques have been used to reduce the vehicle design cycle. In this paper, a new particle swarm-based optimization method is presented for multi-objective optimization of vehicle crashworthiness. The proposed optimization method is first validated with a multi-objective disk brake problem taken from literature. Finally, it is applied to multi-objective crashworthiness optimization of a full vehicle model and milling optimization problems to demonstrate its effectiveness and validity.