A road vehicle multibody model for crash simulation based on the plastic hinges approach to structural deformations

The development of strategies for the passive safety protection of road vehicles, such as restraint svstems, only focus on a part of the vehicle but still require the complete vehicle model to simulate realistic scenarios. Unfortunately complete models of vehicles are not available by car manufacturers for this purpose. Here a complete multibody model of a road vehicle, including occupant models, is presented for application to the design of side impact protection. The structure of the vehicle is represented by multibody system of rigid bodies connected by kinematic joints and plastic hinges. The plastic hinges characteristic are obtained from CAD information via nonlinear finite element analysis of structural components. The contact between the system components is represented by a continuous contact force model. The integrated model, simulated in side impact and validated against experimental test data, is discussed and its use for developing new safety devices is outlined.