Abstract

The Chair of Automotive Engineering and Safety at the Dresden University of Applied Sciences is currently developing a Biofidel-Dummy to evaluate individual and new load cases on a wide scale. This is done by mapping injuries in the form of material damage to the skeletal structure and soft tissue in correlation to human injuries. The focus of this dummy development is on anthropomorphically represented anatomy and biomechanics.

The physical Biofidel-Dummy is converted into a virtual model using the finite element method to form an efficient safety system design tool in conjunction with the hardware dummy. Using the ANSA preprocessor, the components of the dummy are individually discretized and assembled via contact and connection modelling in the Impetus Afea solver.

The creation of the numerical dummy model started with the individual creation of a homogeneous hexahedral mesh of each CAD-component of the dummy. In order to obtain high-quality computational results in the solver, the aim was to create a mesh with the most even element distribution and ideal element shapes. In the next step the discretized parts were transferred into the solver Impetus in form of a keyword file. There the individual, meshed parts were assembled using different joining techniques. In order to simulate human behavior as realistically as possible, the deformable materials and contacts of the components were also modeled in a complex process. Parameters (friction coefficients, Young's modulus, Poisson’s ratio, etc.) were used for this purpose, which had previously been determined experimentally in elaborate material tests.

With the help of global validation experiments, the overall performance was checked to be able to guarantee realistic simulation results of the overall model in accident reconstructions.

This entire process resulted in a high-performance numerical model of the Biofidel-Dummy, which enables short computation times while achieving high-quality computational results for the design of vehicle safety systems.