Automotive Assessments PRIMER

When Automotive Assessments is launched in PRIMER you are presented with this window. This is where you specify the crash test type and the occupants and structures you want to assess:

Automotive Assessments steps:

1. Specify the Protocol (Crash Test, Regulation and Version)
2. Specify the Model Units
3. Specify the Vehicle Drive Side and add Occupants
4. Define Structures
5. Configure Options
6. Saving the workflow user data

Step 1: Specify the Protocol (Crash Test, Regulation and Version)

Use the dropdown menus to select the protocol Crash Test, Regulation and Version of the occupants and vehicle structures being assessed. Select them top to bottom order in the gui as the regulation dropdown update based on the crash test selection and the protocol version update based on the crash test and regulation selection

Step 2: Specify Model Units

Select the unit system of your model from the Model Units dropdown. This will be used to ensure the LS-DYNA results are post-processed with the correct units.

Step 3: Specify the Vehicle Drive Side and add Occupants

The Occupants section is used to select which occupants are in the vehicle, their positions in the vehicle and the IDs of the entities from which data can be read from.  This section updates automatically to show the required occupants for the selected crash test type and regulation. In the image below it shows that two HIII-50M occupants are expected in the driver and front passenger positions.

The first thing to do is select whether the vehicle is left hand or right hand drive (LHD or RHD). The vehicle image will update to show the steering wheel on the correct side and the occupant positions will also update:

For each occupant, click Add. Note that if your model does not have an occupant (or you don't want to carry out an assessment on it) you can leave it empty. T/HIS and D3PLOT will only attempt to process results for occupants that have been added.

Clicking Add opens a window where you can set the occupant type and select the IDs of entities:

The occupant type can be selected from the Occupant Name dropdown menu.

The options shown in this dropdown are filtered by the values in the Supplier, Product and Physiology dropdown menus. When the window is first opened these are automatically set so only occupant types that are relevant for the selected crash test type, regulation and occupant position are shown.

In this example the selected occupant is expected to be a HIII-50M occupant so the Product filter is set to HIII and the Physiology filter is set to 50M

If for some reason you wish to select an occupant of a different type to the one expected, you can change the values of the filters to list other occupant types. A table of the currently supported occupant types can be found here. If you would like to request support for a new occupant type please reach out to us via our support channels.

The position of the occupant in the vehicle will be set automatically, but you can change this with the Position dropdown menu if required:

Entity IDs can be specified either by their numerical labels or DATABASE_HISTORY titles (for entities that have them defined) or DATABASE_CROSS_SECTION titles for X-Sections.

The tool knows what the default numerical labels are for each entity in each occupant type and will automatically fill the textboxes in with those values. If they do not exist in the model, for example if the model has been renumbered, the textboxes are coloured red, e.g.

If they do exist the textboxes will change colour to indicate that (the colour will depend on the UI Theme), e.g.

If the occupant has been renumbered so the labels are offset from the default ones, the Offset for IDs option can be used to apply the offset. This is useful when you have two or more occupants of the same type in the model as they both can't have the same entity labels.

Offset = 0:

Offset = 10000:

Alternatively, the entity IDs can be specified using DATABASE_HISTORY and DATABASE_CROSS_SECTION titles instead of their numerical labels. To automatically switch to use titles where they exist you can click on the Use Database History Titles button:

Note that a mix of defining some entities using numerical labels and others with titles is perfectly valid, they don't all have to be defined the same way.

You can manually select entities by right clicking on a textbox. This opens a popup window which allows you to Pick or Select the entity interactively on the screen or select it from a list of DATABASE_HISTORY / DATABASE_CROSS_SECTION entities (ones with titles are listed first and ones without at the bottom).

Once the entities have been defined you can press Add at the top of the window to add the occupant definition.

This will close the window and the Occupants section will update to show that an occupant has been defined in the selected position. If all the entity IDs are defined and valid the occupant will be shown like this:

If there are any undefined or invalid entity IDs it will look like this, i.e. enclosed in angular brackets "< >":

If the occupant is a different type to the one expected it will look like this:

T/HIS and D3PLOT will cope with any undefined or invalid, but obviously won't be able to carry out any assessments that require them.

If you want to edit or delete the occupant, you can click on the Edit or Delete buttons.

Step 4: Define Structures

Structures are additional entities (typically on the vehicle structure) which are required to conduct the full protocol assessment. Some protocols do not have any required structures:

Where structures are applicable for the selected protocol, they will appear in the Structures column on the main Automotive Assessments GUI.

In the image below it shows that an A-Pillar, Accelerator Pedal, Brake Pedal and Steering Column structures are to be assessed.

To define a structure, simply click on it to open the structure window to see the entities which need to be defined for that structure (shown for the "Steering Column" structure below).

You can then enter the ID or history title for the entities or alternatively right click to open the popup to allow you to pick/select/create the entity. This works in the same way as the occupants window where IDs can be specified either by their numerical labels or DATABASE_HISTORY titles (for entities that have them defined). 

For convenience, a list of the existing entities (e.g. *DATABASE_HISTORY_[NODE|BEAM|DISCRETE], *DATABASE_CROSS_SECTION etc.) are listed in the popup which is especially useful you have given the entities have meaningful titles. 

If the specified entity do not exist in the model, the corresponding textbox is coloured red. If they do exist they change colour (the colour will depend on the UI Theme: white for the light theme as shown in the image below). 

Note how in the image below a mixture of history titles and numeric ids have been used to demonstrate both options. If the ID has a corresponding history title then it will also appear in the hover text.

You can use the structure drop-down to select the next structure you would like to define. 

Note that if your model does not have a structure (or you don't want to carry out an assessment on it) you can leave it empty. T/HIS and D3PLOT will only attempt to process results for structures that have been added.

Once you have selected all the entity IDs click on Update All to save them and close the window. 

The Remove button sets all the entity IDs of the current structure to 0, effectively removing it from the assessment.

The Reset button sets the entity IDs back to what they were before any edits were made.

The Cancel button closes the window, without saving the selected entity IDs.

After you have selected entity IDs the structures section will update with different colours to show what is defined and what is not, e.g

Structures that are coloured like this mean they have all the required entity IDs defined and the exist in the model:

Structures that are coloured like this and enclosed in < >'s mean some of the required entity IDs are defined and exist in the model, but there are others that are either undefined or don't exist in the model:

Structures coloured like this and enclosed in < >'s mean none of the required entity IDs are defined or exist in the model:

Non-standard Structures:

There are some structures which require additional inputs (i.e. not just entities). One such structure is the "Head Excursion" structure

Note that some structures may relate the particular occupants sat in the vehicle e.g. the Head Excursion structure must be defined to enable the post processing of the driver occupant head excursion relative to the vehicle.

Step 5: Configure Options

The options column allows you to configure options of how the LS-DYNA data will be post-processed. Some options have general applicability and some are specific to particular protocols.

Time of first sample

To accommodate the pre-crash (settling) phase in a simulation, a “Time of first sample” input is present. In accordance with ISO-MME convention, a negative time value is used to shift the start time of the output curves when post-processing using the Automotive Assessments, SimVT and LS-DYNA to ISO-MME workflows in T/HIS.

Accelerations from dv/dt

If ticked then accelerations will be derived from differentiated velocities when post processing in T/HIS

Duration of OOP braking

This option is specific to the CNCAP Front AEB OOP 2024 protocol.

Enter a positive value to define the out of position (OOP) braking phase (e.g. 0.5 for a 500 ms braking phase). When post-processing with Automotive Assessments, the curve will be split in to two curves: one ends at "Time of OOP braking" and the other starts at "Time of OOP braking".

Step 6: Saving workflow user data

You can choose to save the data to a .JSON file or directly to the model. The user data from the file will then be picked up when the workflow is selected in T/HIS or D3PLOT. Note if you choose to save the data to the model then you will need to save the model in PRIMER to ensure that the data is written to the master keyword file.

Supported Dummies 

The following table lists all the occupants supported in the Automotive Assessment Workflows, along with the corresponding supplier documentation filename that was referenced in creating the respective occupant JSON files.

Creating missing *DATABASE_HISTORY_XXX keywords

Any entity which exists in the model but which does not have the associated *DATABASE_HISTORY_XXX keyword defined will appear with a latent colour in the ID textbox:

Clicking on the textbox and pressing ENTER will open a window which can help you create the *DATABASE_HISTORY_XXX keyword:

You can choose which include the new keyword is added to (it will default to the Current Layer) and can optionally provide a title for the history data too. In the example window above, a new *DATABASE_HISTORY_NODE_TITLE keyword will be created in the master.key file when Create is pressed. You must remember to save the keyword files that have been modified or any new *DATABASE_HISTORY outputs will not be present when the model is run.