Abstract
The paper presented aspects relats to the thermoforming simulation with T-SIM and the crash simulation with LS-DYNA, of a polymeric energy absorber called SafetyPlastic®. SafetyPlastic® is an energy absorbing technology that offers a performance, cost, and mass competitive energy management solution. It is characterized by a connected plurality of structural recesses of various shape that repeatedly give resistance, and then buckle when impacted. By considering the strain rate dependence of the polymer, a good correlation of the associated finite element analysis with the experiment was obtained enabling the model to be used in automotive industry for the simulation in both head and side impact, FMVSS 201u and FMVSS 214 respectively, tests. Keywords: polymeric energy absorber, finite element model, buckling, strain rate sensitive