Evaluation of Occupant Head Injury during Automotive Interior Head Impact Using FEM Approach

A significant fraction of fatalities involving passengers in automobile accidents is due to severe Head Injury. Head impact safety which in turn is the occupant safety is a significant consideration particularly in the design of Passenger Vehicles. During the rollover of SUV the head comes in contact with the parts such as the B-Pillar so in order to evaluate the occupant safety during rollover National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has set Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 201 Upper (FMVSS201U). The regulation FMVSS201U emphasizes on the design and testing methodology of the occupant injury levels during interior impact scenario. The FEA tool, Hypermesh is used for the pre-processing i.e model preparation and load case setup. LS-DYNA 3D, a nonlinear dynamic solver is used for solving. Hyper view is used as post-processor to derive the HIC (d) values from the analysis.