Response Surface Methods and Pareto Optimization in Crashworthiness Design

This paper presents a method where a multi objective optimization technique is used together with response surface methods in order to support crashworthiness design. As in most engineering design problems there are several conflicting objectives that have to be considered when formulating a design problem as an optimization problem. Here this is exemplified by the desire to minimize the intrusion into the passenger compartment area and simultaneously obtain low maximum acceleration during vehicle impact. These two objectives are naturally conflicting, since low maximum acceleration implies large intrusion. The contribution of this paper is to show a successful application of a set of existing methods to solve a real world engineering problem. The paper also presents methods of illustrating the results obtained from the multi-objective optimization.