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Since the European Experimental Vehicle Committee(EEVC) has proposed new side impact procedure, car designers should consider improving crashworthiness not only for the NHTSA side impact but also for the new European side impact. The two test procedures totally differ in test methods and injury values to measure. Therefore structural design concept must be different from each other. This paper presents a computer simulation of small MPV passenger car structure and occupant in the European side impact. A study of small MPV car structure is performed to reduce the injury values. Full vehicle dynamic simulation is done by LS-DYNA3D on Cray T-94. Intrusion velocities and deformations of door and center pillar are considered as performance factors of the structures to understand any relations with the injuries. From the result we have proposed the several structural design concepts of small MPV to meet the European side impact reguration and to improve Euro-NCAP side impact score.

As a vehicle being tested in the proving ground is under complex conditions in loads and constraints compared to the computer-aided finite element analysis, several specific load cases are used for convenience in the analysis. This paper represents new method for analytical approach to proving ground durability test. Full vehicle of tires, chassis system, and trimmed body in finite elements runs on a digitized proving ground (virtual proving ground), acting forces of the suspensions to the body are continuously acquired at mounts, and stresses are calculated on the body. With the history of stresses, fatigue life of the body is predicted. For validation of this analysis the result of test which was conducted with prototype of a passenger car on the test road is referenced. The digitized road used in the analysis has the same profile of the durability course called Belgian block road. Two results were compared in terms of accelerations and fatigue life.