Stiffness-based method for improving pedestrian leg protection performance of vehicle front-end

In vehicle-to-pedestrian impact accidents, the lower limb is the most commonly injured body part. The current regulation used the pedestrian legform test method to assess the pedestrian leg protection performance, which imposed new design requirements for vehicle front end. In order to better understand the effects of vehicle front end structures on the pedestrian legform peak acceleration, a stiffness-based method was proposed, which gave an overall consideration to the geometrical and stiffness variables of vehicle bumper, spoiler and bonnet leading edge structures. A series of 24 finite element simulations were conducted to investigate the correlation between the total stiffness and design variables of the vehicle front-end. By comparing the total stiffness and the local stiffness of front-end structures, the effects of front-end design variables on the legform peak acceleration could be obtained, which help engineers rapidly find the solution to vehicle design improvement.