Virtual validation of the head impact on the dashboard of a vehicle

The role played by safety in the design of the vehicle has increased in the last years with the introduction of more active and passive devices for the prevention of accident and minimization of injuries of the occupants. The thesis is based on occupant protection against the interior of the car with the purpose of virtually validating the head impact on the dashboard of the vehicle according to FMVSS 201L regulations.?? In order to better understand the interaction between the head impactor and the monitor of the dashboard, the setup of the model for the analysis is focused on the monitor. The first step is the pre-processing phase, starting from the creation of the mesh up to the definition of all the properties that determine the mechanical behaviour of the component.?? Once this step is completed, some structural simulations are carried out with the implicit solver OptiStruct. In particular, a modal analysis is conducted to check that the structural modes of the monitor are above the target in terms of frequency required to avoid noise and internal vibrations. Linear static analyses are instead performed, by applying a load on different components of the monitor, to compute its stiffness. ?? After these structural analyses, the head impact tests on the dashboard are performed with the explicit solver Ls-Dyna. The simulations were performed on two different points of impact, chosen by the car manufacturer as the most representative of the interaction between the monitor and the head impactor. ?? The results obtained from these simulations are analyzed in the post-processing phase in terms of energy balance, deceleration of the head impactor and contact force between the impactor and the dashboard. Finally, since the car manufacturer suggests to investigate other production processes, a change of the material of structural elements of the monitor and the lower shell of the instrument panel is considered, in order to understand their influence in the behavior of the dashboard.