Reliability-based design optimization for vehicle body crashworthiness based on copula functions

Vehicle body crashworthiness is crucial in a traffic accident. It can protect passengers from serious injury or death and reduce vehicle damage. To provide a more effective design framework for ensuring crash safety, a reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) method for vehicle body crashworthiness considering complex parametric correlation is developed by integrating copula functions. An RBDO model is formulated for the vehicle body crashworthiness problem based on a finite element model of a vehicle crash. Taking into account the correlation of random parameters, the optimal copula function is selected by the Bayesian method to model parametric correlation and build the joint probability distribution function. An efficient solution strategy is provided to perform the reliability analysis and optimization design of crashworthiness. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is reliable and has a high accuracy for crashworthiness design.