This article reviews approaches to mathematical modeling of a vehicle crash. The growing focus on vehicle and occupant safety in car crashes has triggered the need to study vehicle crashworthiness in the initial stages of vehicle development. The major motivation for this work is to support vehicle crashworthiness design during the product development process.The article is divided into two parts; the first one overviews existing mathematical models used to solve engineering problems. The second part describes modeling strategies applied for replicating non-linear vehicle crash event and occupant kinematics in an occupant protection loadcase. We also highlight alternative modeling strategies using hybrid modeling techniques aimed at the improvement of the vehicle development process.

This paper deals with the undesired effects of the heat treatments on the mechanical properties of (UHSS) Ultra High Strength Steel used nowadays in automotive industry to improve crashworthiness performance of vehicles. The UHSS specimens were extracted from certain parts of the car body and subjected to different heat treatments. Four types of specimens were tested: untreated, welded with metal inert gas welding, heat treated at 800 °C, and heat treated at 1250 °C. All heat-treated specimens showed dramatically reduced values of strength. The results suggest that it is important to follow the official repair manuals avoiding unnecessary welding and improper heat treatments of UHSS. The experiments provide the data necessary for constructing a constitutive model and performing a finite-element analysis of improperly repaired UHSS parts.