Optimum SUV bumper system design considering pedestrian performance

Until recently, passenger cars have primarily interested in pedestrian protection performance. Nowadays, however, it is important for a sport-utility vehicle (SUV) to meet the bumper system standards for pedestrian safety. For a SUV bumper system, there are some difficulties in attaining a high level of pedestrian performance for the lower legform. An SUV has a high bumper position from the ground level, and the bumper approach angle must also be secured, which has an effect on car insurance fees. Due to these reasons, it is difficult to meet the pedestrian performance of the lower legform for an SUV. In this paper, a comparative study was performed on various SUV bumper systems, and a concept model for a SUV bumper system was developed, which is expected to meet the pedestrian performance by using the Pugh method. The design control factors were defined to affect the bumper pedestrian performance through the experiences of tests and analyses. For the noise factor to affect the pedestrian performance, the deviation of the impactor position was selected at the moment of impact. The design control factors were optimized by using the Taguchi optimization technique. For the Taguchi method, an L18 orthogonal array table of design control factors was used in the optimization process. Particularly, for the optimization of the bumper corner region, an optimization analysis was performed three times to meet pedestrian performance. Based on the results of the Taguchi optimization method, the sensitivity of the bumper design parameters was studied, and a new SUV bumper system is proposed that satisfies the pedestrian performance of the lower legform. The optimized bumper system should obtain a full Euro-NCAP score of 6 points for the bumper test. The pedestrian performance of the optimized bumper system is validated by using a CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) analysis, which has been proven to be in accurate. A comparison between the test and analysis results is shown for the validation of accuracy. By using the optimized bumper system, the tests and development costs of a bumper can be reduced.