Abstract
Systems Modeling evaluates the fleetwide crashworthiness of a vehicle design across the full range of potential impact speeds, angles, collision partners, occupant seating locations, and occupant restraints. Although this approach provides a more thorough assessment of crash protection than provided by a single crash test or simulation, the development of a complete Systems Model requires exhaustive simulation of every potential crash mode — a computationally prohibitive approach. This paper presents a methodology in which real world highway accident data is used to systematically develop Systems Modeling strategies that fully expose the tradeoffs between computational expense and model fidelity as measured by Harm. Using Australian side impact accident data, the paper illustrates the methodology by developing two computationally efficient strategies for developing a Systems Model for the evaluation and optimization of Side Impact protection.