23 Redesign of Outer Hood Panel...(Binyamin) ISSN: 1411-4348 REDESIGN OF OUTER HOOD PANEL OF ESEMKA R2 CAR TO IMPROVE PEDESTRIAN PROTECTION USING FINITE ELEMENT MODELING Binyamin Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta Jl. A. Yani Tromol Pos 1 Pabelan, Kartasura, Surakarta 57102, Indonesia Email: bin290@ums.ac.id ABSTRACT Traffc accidents are terrible scourge that occur in many countries, specially for developing countries where transportation affairs like tangled yarn. Besides functioning as an engine compartment cover, the hood of modern compact SUV can also help to manage the impact energy of a pedestrian’s head in a vehicle-pedestrian impact. This paper presents outer hood design of Esemka R2 that has a potential to improve hood’s ability and also to absorb the impact energy of a pedestrian’s head. The developed method for the design of an outer hood confguration aims to provide a robust design and homogeneous of Head Injury Criterion (HIC) for impact position at WAD 1000 and three different thicknesses (1.25 mm, 1.35 mm & 1.50 mm) of outer hood panel of Esemka R2 compact SUV, taking into consideration the limited space available for deformation. The non-linear Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software (Explicit Dynamics) was used in this research to simulate the testing procedurs of head impact for child pedestrian. The results show that the average of comparison dimensional of outer hood panel of Esemka R2 was 4.89 mm. The minimum of deformation space meet the requirement for HIC value which required obtaining robust and homogeneous head impact performance. Outer hood thickness and materials were identifed as the factors to infuence the stress and HIC value of the hood. By comparing all outer hood panels, aluminium alloy as the best selected material which has the lowest value is 32.78% for the pedestrian protection. Keywords: Head impact; HIC; outer hood panel; FEA; pedestrian protection. INTRODUCTION The latest data released by the World Health Organization (WHO) showed that India ranks frst country with the highest number of deaths caused by traffc accidents, while Indonesia was reported to have an increase in the number of traffc accidents by more than 80 percents, where the death toll from traffc accidents reached 120 people per day [1]. In those days, the belief was that the only way to reduce pedestrian fatalities and injuries was to prevent pedestrian–vehicle collisions. Several previous researchers [2]–[6] proposed improvements of hood panel based on pedestrian head protection which hood designs and materials created in fnite element model. Explicit dynamics of FEM have proved to be useful for sheet metal simulation [7]. Consideration of modifcation of vehicle design for pedestrian protection was not an option at that time. From this sequence of events, it can be stated that typically the colliding vehicle runs under the pedestrian and the severity of injuries vastly depend on the vehicle shape and certain characteristics such as energy absorption. In the Australian New Car Assesment Program (ANCAP), the pedestrian tests are carried out to estimate head and