Optimisation study on multibody vehicle-front model for pedestrian safety

Ensuring the safety of pedestrians in a crash with automobiles remains a vehicle design challenge. Multibody simulations were developed in MADYMO to simulate a crash of a parametrised vehicle front model (14 parameters) against three different Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) pedestrian models (50th %le M, 5th %le F, 6 Y.O. Child). Threat to a targeted pedestrian population was measured using a weighted injury cost (WIC) measure. A pedestrian friendly vehicle profile was obtained using genetic algorithm-based global optimisation to minimise WIC with geometric constraints on vehicle profile. With known limitations, at least one pedestrian-friendly vehicle shape not resembling any existing vehicle profile was found.