Deep Learning as a New Framework for Passive Vehicle Safety Design Using Finite Elements Models Data

In recent years, passive vehicle safety has become one of the major concerns for the automotive industry due to the considerable increase in the use of cars as a means of daily transport. Since real crash testing has a high financial cost, finite element simulations are generally used, which entail high computational cost and long simulation times. In this paper, we make use of the recent advances in the deep learning field to propose an affordable method to provide reliable approximations of the finite element simulator model that significantly reduce the computational load and time required. We compare the prediction performance in crash tests of different models, namely feed-forward neural networks and bayesian neural networks, as well as two multi-output regression methods. Our results show promising results, as deep learning models are able to drastically reduce the engineering costs while providing a feasible first approximation to the passenger’s injuries in a crash event, thus being a potential game changer in the vehicle safety design process.