Crashworthiness Characteristics and Structural Optimization of Electric Vehicles’ Side Pole Impact

This article analyzes the characteristics of the side pole impact of electric vehicles compared to fuel vehicles. Electric vehicles not only need to control the amount of collision intrusion, but also need to optimize the acceleration of the body to avoid the impact on high-pressure parts. And because there are battery modules under the front floor of the electric vehicle, in order to avoid squeezing the module, the electric vehicle also needs to specifically control the deformation mode of the seat cross member. Taking an electric vehicle as an example, this paper studies the key energy-absorbing parts of electric vehicle in side pole collision, and optimizes the structure of key energy-absorbing parts through topology optimization and sub-model methods, achieves a weight reduction of 7.2 kg. Full vehicle CAE and test results show that the crashworthiness of electric vehicles has been significantly improved after optimization, which proves that the proposed structural optimization method for side pole impact of electric vehicles is feasible.