Enhancing real-life safety by integration of active and passive safety system simulation

摘要

In recent years, several car manufacturers have introduced advanced safety systems with the aim of mitigating the effects of accidents or even preventing accidents from occurring. The benefit of these active safety systems to vehicle safety is acknowledged by legislative authorities and consumer bodies, which has led to several initiatives to legislate or reward these new safety technologies. However, several studies have shown that autonomous systems, such as emergency braking and evasive steering, can lead to non-optimal occupant posture and position resulting in reduced performance of the occupant restraint systems when a collision is unavoidable. Consequently, these active safety systems cannot be developed independently of the passive safety systems. Instead, they need to be developed and assessed in an integrated way. Currently, no experimental methods or simulation tools exist for evaluating the effects of pre-crash dynamics on the occupant injury risk during the crash phase. This paper outlines the use of two complementary software packages that together provide the ability to cover all critical aspects of the design of an integrated safety system. One of the software packages (PreScan) focuses on the design of the sensing and control systems, as well as the evaluation of these systems for a wide range of different traffic scenarios and weather conditions. The other software package (MADYMO) predicts the occupant response and injury risk throughout the whole pre- and in-crash event. Integration of both software packages makes it possible to investigate the robust functioning of integrated safety systems during complex vehicle manoeuvres. It enables the design of sensing and controllers as well as further optimization of occupant restraint systems based on predictive collision information. Using a real-world application example of an emergency braking system, the combined use of these software packages including an active human model is demonstrated to aid the cost-efficient and robust development of integrated safety systems.