Abstract: The vehicle safety and comfort design of passenger compartment is the key task at early conceptual design stage. Both are coupling. The multidisciplinary design optimization(MDO) is applied to the design of passenger compartment to realize the two disciplines designed in parallel. Aiming at the passenger compartment layout of new models, based on the frontal crash test, modeling the occupant restraint system of a van using occupant injury analysis software and validating it to evaluate the vehicle safety; but also based on the concept of joint strength to establish the model of passenger comfort. The multidisciplinary design optimization was applied to the design of passenger compartment, avoiding optimizing safety and comfort separately using the traditional design method. This method achieves the design of the two disciplines in parallel, to shorten the development cycle, to maximize the overall performance of the passenger compartment. In order to improve efficiency, Kriging approximation model of the occupant restraint system is built to instead of simulation model through the design of experiments. The results showed that: the method make the passenger compartment meet the safety performance well and improve ride comfort, which has a strong engineering practicability in the layout of passenger compartment.

Key words: Comfort design, Multidisciplinary design optimization, Occupant restraint system, Passenger compartment layout