Abstract: The traditional anti-collision structure only needs to meet the requirements of safety indicator, though which requires both peak collision acceleration and maximum deformation are small, the conflicting requirements has intersection set in feasible domain. With the perfection of national standards, the re-directive performance indicator newly added requires very high stiffness. As a result, the requirements on both safety and re-directive performance leads to an empty set in feasible domain, and this issue can't be solved by the existing methods available. In view of this, a leader-follower joint topology optimization scheme is proposed in this paper for the crashworthiness of the anti-collision structures with both energy absorbing and re-directive performances. Firstly, the safety follower model is established according to the safety indicator. Then, based on the force transfer path of safety follower model, a re-directive stiffness compensation device is introduced, by combining which with safe follower model the leader model is built. Subsequently, a topology optimization is carried out, with its topology configuration obtained. Finally, the applicability of the scheme proposed is verified by real examples and the results show that the vehicle has excellent re-directive performance in 25% overlap collision and superb energy absorbing effects in 100% overlap crash, providing a new way for the optimal design of anti-collision structures.

Key words: anti-collision structure, energy absorption and re-direction, crashworthiness, leader-follower joint topological optimization, stiffness compensation