Case Study: Coventry University improves crash structure design evaluation with Hexagon ODYSSEE CAE

Automotive accidents of tomorrow exploration of innovative crash structure design trends

The Institute for Future Transport and Cities at Coventry University needed to analyze and compare the effectiveness of 12 innovative crash structure designs, a complex challenge as the designs varied in geometry, impact conditions, and performance metrics. To evaluate them, the customer required a solution that could efficiently handle this large, non-linear optimisation study while preserving critical time/history data.

Hexagon, using its ODYSSEE CAE software, created accurate reduced-order models (ROMs) for the study. This approach slashed the number of required FEM simulations from an estimated 15,000 to just 1,500, making the optimization time manageable. The results were highly accurate, with predictions averaging within 5% of FEM values, allowing the university to clearly identify the most efficient new design trends, with the hexagon structure emerging as a particularly promising candidate.

Coventry University

Jesper Christensen

Associate Professor