Impact of Steering Column Stiffness on the Injury Criteria of Dummies using Siemens Madymo

Abstract

In the event of an accident, in today’s vehicle belt and airbag systems and steering columns absorb the kinetic energy of occupants in front crashes. Most steering columns are equipped with a deformation device, which provides additional forward displacement of the steering wheel when being impacted dynamically by the occupant. As these features perform on predefined force levels, they deform less when loaded with lower energy, e.g. when impacted by a smaller occupant. So especially for occupants of lower kinetic energy the maximum available forward displacement is not provided, so they will be decelerated on a higher g-levels than needed. This study investigates for different dummies how the force level of the steering column must be designed to keep the standard injury criteria as low as possible. The aim is to make a statement about the required optimized force levels of the steering column in order to examine technical feasibility in subsequent studies. To carry out these investigations, a parameter study is carried out in Siemens Madymo and the results obtained are interpreted. Subsequently, the limitations of this study are pointed out and further improvements are suggested.