• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.144-155
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• 1999

An occupant analysis code SAFE (Safety Analysis For occupant crash Environment) is utilized to simulate and improve the crash performance of an energy absorbing steering system. The safety standard FMVSS 203 is simulated and used for design evaluations . Segments and contact elliposids are utilized to model the bod blocks and the components of the steering system with SAFE. Spring-damper elements and force-deflection characteristics are utilized to model the energy absorbing components such as the plate and the polyacetal molding. The plate absorbs the impact energy through tensile deformation . Whereas, the polyacetal molding absorbs the impact energy through compression. the body block test is carried out to validate tie simulation model, and real component tests are performed to extract the force-deflection curves . After the model is validated , the parameter study is carried out to evaluate the crash performance of the energy absorbing components. A performance measure is defined for the parameter study. Using the results of the parameter study and managing the orthogonal arrays, optimum design values of energy absorbing components are determined to minize the occupant injury.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.33-44
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• 1995

As the occupant safety receives more attention from automobile industries. protection systems have been developed quite well. Developed protection systems must be evaluated through real tests in crash environment Since the real tests are extremely expensive. computer simulations are replaced for some prediction of the real test In the computer simulation. it is very crucial to express the real environment precisely in the modeling precess. The energy absorbing(EA) steering system has a very important rote in vehicle crashes because the occupant can hit the system directly. In this study. the EA steering system is modeled precisely. analyzed for the safely and designed by an optimization technology. First. the EA steering system is disassembled by parts and modeled by segments and joints. The segments are modeled by rigid bodies in motion and they have resistances in contact. Spring-damper elements and force-deflection curves are utilized to represent the joints. The body block test is cal lied out to validate. the modeling. When the test results are not enough for the detailed modeling. the differences between tests and simulations are minimized to calculate unknown parameters using optimization. The established model is applied to a crash simulation of a full-car model and tuned again. After the modeling is finished. components of the steering system are designed by an optimization algorithm. In the optimization process. the compound injury of a driver is defined and minimized to determine the chracteristics of the components. The second. order approximation algorithm has been adopted for the optimization.