Crashworthiness design optimization of S-rail

The passenger vehicle rail is a major energy-absorbing member in the vehicle structure. Many longitudinal rails of vehicle frame have S-shaped structures. Design of such components is crucial in the automotive industry to ensure the vehicle structural integrity and the occupant safety during the vehicle impacts. Optimum crashworthiness design of the vehicle rail structure is one of the crucial tasks in designing crashworthy vehicles. In this paper, an efficient design optimization methodology is presented and utilized to obtain optimum crashworthiness design of the S-rail structures. The methodology adopted in this research makes use of Design of Experiments based approximation methods, numerical optimization algorithms and structural analysis software. The design optimization approach has been devoted to structural impact applications. The nonlinear explicit Finite Element code PAM-CRASH was used to conduct the rail impact problems and generate the energy functions to be maximized. Several design parameters have been proposed and used to optimize the rail structure. The results indicated the promising capabilities of the developed methodology for design optimization of the energy absorbing rails in automotive industry.