High-fidelity numerical framework for crashworthiness evaluation of passenger car body structures under full-frontal impact.

Frontal collisions are among the most severe crash modes, requiring robust front-end design to ensure occupant safety. High-fidelity finite element (FE) simulations play a crucial role in evaluating energy absorption, intrusion patterns, and crash pulse fidelity during early vehicle design. This study develops and validates a high-fidelity finite-element model of a passenger-car BIW subjected to a 64 km/h full-frontal impact, addressing those limitations. The proposed framework couples global crash metrics energy balance, deceleration pulse, intrusion, and sectional forces with spatial plastic-strain mapping using shotgun plots to evaluate localized deformation behavior. Validation was performed against NCAP crash data and published finite-element models, showing close agreement: peak deceleration = 32 g (–1.5% error), pulse duration = 87 ms (–3.3%), and toe-pan intrusion = 123 mm (+ 2.5%). More than 92% of the initial kinetic energy was absorbed as internal plastic work with total energy balance error < 5%, confirming numerical stability. Shotgun analysis indicated that 68% of crash-box elements and 54% of front-rail elements exceeded the 0.15 strain threshold, identifying dominant energy-absorbing regions. The framework provides a reproducible, simulation-only approach for assessing crashworthiness and structural optimization without requiring experimental testing. The methodology can be readily extended to multi-condition crash scenarios and lightweight design applications, offering a cost-effective foundation for predictive safety evaluation in next-generation vehicle architectures.