Optimization and experiment of the cross car beam with a certain vehicle based on 25% overlap frontal crash test

According to the 25% overlap frontal crash procedure formulated by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a test was conducted on a prototype vehicle. The test results showed that it’s cross car beam was fallen off from the Body-in-White along the Y axis of the vehicle coordinate system. In order to improve the crash safety of this vehicle type, this paper adopts parametric modeling, carries out finite element analysis on the statics module of Ansys Workbench for the cross car beam, and optimizes the cross car beam from the design standards and material properties. Then the aforementioned static analysis and real vehicle crash test are repeated after the optimization, the results show that the stress at the failure areas is dramatically reduced and the beam doesn’t fall off from the Body-in-White, which verifies the effectiveness of the scheme and provides a reference for the design and optimization of the cross car beam.