A novel approach for the assessment of robustness of vehicle structures under crash

The use of numerical optimisation in vehicle development aiming at designing increasingly lighter vehicle structures may lead to a highly sensitive behaviour in terms of crashworthiness. Methods for the analysis of robustness have been introduced to account for the impact of varying input parameters, possibly detecting undesired deformation modes due to bifurcations. The objective of this paper is to introduce an index for the quantitative assessment of robustness of vehicle structures under crash. The novel approach is applied to axially impacted extrusion profiles as well as to an assembly of extrusion profiles under varying input parameters. It was found that the new Robustness Index accurately reflects the findings from state-of-the-art methods of robustness analysis, enabling an objective and transparent overall assessment of robustness prior to a potential in-depth analysis.