Robust design of an interior hard trim to improve occupant safety in a vehicle crash

Head injury ranks among the top contributors in automobile accidents. Consequently, although styling is treated important, safety of occupants in a crash receives preemptive priority in the design of automotive interior components. Additionally, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 201 has laid down certain requirements to be fulfilled by automobile manufacturers for producing a safe vehicle. One of the requirements stipulate dummy equivalent of the Head Injury Criteria, i.e. HIC(d) value for the interior components of a vehicle to be below 1000 under certain stated conditions. In this paper, we provide a robust design approach to achieve the requirements for one such interior component, viz. an interior hard trim that covers the pillar closest to the driver's head on the left-hand side of the vehicle.