Optimal Design of the S-Rail for Crashworthiness Analysis

S-rails in vehicle structure are the main energy-absorbing components in case of frontal collision. Optimal crashworthiness design of such components is one of the crucial tasks in designing crashworthy vehicles. In this paper, an S-Rail impact model is extracted from a true rail used in a vehicle frame. Response surface method coupled with genetic algorithm is presented and utilized to obtain optimal crashworthiness design. The method adopted in this research makes use of design of experiments (DOE) and numerical optimization algorithms. 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 like the cross section width, cross section height and the curvature angle have been proposed and used to optimize the S-railpsilas structure. The results indicated the promising capabilities of the proposed optimal design method for the energy-absorbing of S-rails.