Robustness evaluation of passive safety systems

One of the most important tasks of vehicle design is the steady improvement of passive safety systems. Appropriate consideration of input scatter as well as economic construction of restraint systems considering acceptable transgression probabilities of scattering performance variables can only be achieved by integrating stochastic methods of simulation into virtual product design. Since the beginning of 2005 computational robustness evaluations are performed in virtual product design of the BMW AG in order to stochastically secure important performance variables.

Besides identification of decisive input scatter and estimation of the expected spread of significant performance variables the understanding of the transmission behaviour of scatter as well as the quality of prognosis of the numerical models could be increased. Therefore computational robustness evaluations are already performed at preferably early stages of vehicle development and later at defined milestones.

At the same time assumptions concerning scatter of important input variables e.g. testing conditions, components of suppliers as well as components of the complete vehicle, are verified in order to secure the quality of prognosis of stochastic computations. Thereby it is made sure that the understanding of the system concerning transmission of scatter and the knowledge about decisive input scatter are improved at the same time. The goal thereof is an as robust as possible performance of the restraint systems on highest possible safety level.