Overview
Automotive Safety and Assessment Engineering (ASAE) is designed for students who want to specialize in the development, analysis, testing, and assessment of modern vehicles and their safety systems.
The specialization responds directly to the needs of the automotive industry and the wider vehicle-safety community. Its core areas include vehicle systems engineering, vehicle dynamics, crashworthiness, passive safety, active safety, automotive testing, safety assessment, biomechanics, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), and automated driving technologies.
ASAE therefore approaches automotive engineering from a comprehensive safety perspective. Students learn not only how vehicles operate but also how vehicle systems interact with drivers, occupants, pedestrians, other road users, and the surrounding environment.
Automotive Systems Engineering
A strong understanding of the entire vehicle is essential for safety engineering.
Students study the fundamental architecture and operation of automotive systems, including vehicle power demand, aerodynamic resistance, rolling resistance, internal combustion engines, transmissions, hybrid and electric vehicles, braking systems, suspension systems, steering systems, and vehicle driving performance.
This systems-level knowledge enables students to understand how individual vehicle components influence overall performance, handling, energy consumption, stability, and safety.
Vehicle Crashworthiness and Passive Safety
One of the major areas of ASAE is crashworthiness, which deals with the ability of a vehicle structure to protect occupants and other road users during a collision.
Students learn how vehicle structures absorb and manage crash energy and how vehicle deformation influences occupant injury.
Passive safety topics may involve vehicle body structures, restraint systems, seat belts, airbags, crash-test dummies, occupant kinematics, structural deformation, injury mechanisms, and human body models.
Simulation is also used extensively to investigate crash scenarios before conducting physical tests. Students study modelling approaches ranging from simplified lumped-mass systems to multibody dynamics and detailed finite element models.
Impact Biomechanics and Occupant Safety
Modern vehicle-safety engineering requires an understanding of the interaction between mechanical systems and the human body.
ASAE therefore incorporates impact biomechanics, which investigates how forces, accelerations, and deformation during crashes can cause injury.
Course content addresses topics such as injury severity, injury criteria, major body regions affected during road crashes, occupant response during frontal and side impacts, human body models, crash-test dummy models, restraint systems, and integrated vehicle-occupant simulation.
This knowledge enables engineers to evaluate whether vehicle structures and restraint systems provide appropriate protection under different crash conditions.
Active Safety, ADAS and Automated Driving
Vehicle safety is increasingly moving from simply protecting occupants during an accident to preventing accidents from occurring in the first place.
The current ASAE curriculum therefore includes areas such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and Advanced Automotive Control and Automated Driving.
These fields are becoming increasingly important as modern vehicles incorporate sensors, vehicle control systems, perception technologies, automatic braking, lane-support systems, collision avoidance technologies, driver assistance, and increasingly automated driving functions.
ASAE therefore connects traditional automotive mechanical engineering with emerging intelligent vehicle technologies.
Automotive Standards, Regulations and Assessment
Automotive engineers must understand not only how to design vehicles but also how vehicles are evaluated against technical and safety requirements.
The curriculum consequently includes Standards and Regulations for Automotive Engineering and Fundamentals of Vehicle and Component Assessments.
Students are exposed to the methods used to assess vehicle systems and components using engineering measurements, standardized tests, experimental procedures, and performance criteria.
Practical course content has included vehicle structural testing, chassis and engine dynamometer testing, measurement of heat generation in lithium-ion batteries, electric-vehicle battery thermal-management assessment, crash-testing techniques, braking-system evaluation, Anti-lock Braking System assessment, and Autonomous Emergency Braking assessment.
Electric Vehicle Safety
The transition toward electric mobility introduces a new range of engineering and safety challenges.
Battery systems must provide adequate energy and performance while maintaining safe temperatures and structural integrity under normal operating conditions and in accidents.
ASAE course and research activities therefore extend into areas such as electric-vehicle battery thermal management, battery heat generation, EV component assessment, structural protection of battery systems, and safety-related evaluation of electric vehicles.
This makes ASAE particularly relevant to the continuing transformation of the global automotive industry toward electrification and intelligent mobility.
Accident Investigation and Reconstruction
ASAE also examines safety from the perspective of real-world accidents.
Students may study accident investigation and reconstruction techniques in order to determine how an accident occurred, understand vehicle and occupant behaviour, and identify factors associated with injury.
Knowledge obtained from accident reconstruction can subsequently be used to improve vehicle designs, safety systems, test procedures, and injury-reduction strategies.
ASAE Research and Testing Facilities
ASAE is supported by specialized automotive research and testing facilities at TGGS.
These include the Automotive Virtual Safety Simulation Laboratory, Automotive Test Track, Automotive Component Impact Test Laboratory, Full Vehicle Crash Test Laboratory, and Automotive Brake Performance Test Area.
The combination of virtual simulation and physical testing is particularly important in automotive safety engineering because it allows students and researchers to investigate a problem computationally, validate the results experimentally, and use both sources of information to improve vehicle designs and safety strategies.
International and Industrial Collaboration
Automotive safety is inherently international because vehicle manufacturers, safety organizations, research institutions, and regulatory bodies work across national boundaries.
TGGS states that ASAE has collaborated with organizations and institutions including IKA at RWTH Aachen University, VSI at TU Graz, Université Gustave Eiffel, the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research, ASEAN NCAP, the Korea Automobile Testing Research Institute (KATRI), Autoliv Thailand, the Thailand Automotive Institute, and automotive manufacturers including Toyota and Mitsubishi.
Such connections reinforce the industry-oriented and international character of the specialization and provide an important link between academic research and real automotive engineering challenges.
ASAE Graduate Profile and Career Direction
ASAE graduates are prepared for technical and research careers related to automotive engineering, vehicle safety, crashworthiness, vehicle testing, automotive assessment, occupant protection, active safety systems, ADAS, autonomous vehicles, electric-vehicle safety, vehicle dynamics, accident analysis, automotive R&D, and regulatory or testing organizations.
The combination of mechanical engineering, simulation, testing, safety science, biomechanics, vehicle technology, and intelligent mobility provides graduates with a multidisciplinary perspective that is increasingly important in the modern automotive sector.
Integration of MESD and ASAE
Although MESD and ASAE have different areas of specialization, they are closely connected.
MESD develops the methodologies required to design, model, simulate, optimize, and validate engineering products, while ASAE applies many of these engineering principles specifically to vehicles, mobility systems, crashworthiness, occupant safety, active safety, testing, and assessment.
For example, finite element modelling can be used in MESD to analyse a mechanical structure and in ASAE to simulate vehicle crashes or occupant protection. CFD and thermal analysis can support general mechanical-system development as well as electric-vehicle battery thermal management. CAD, structural optimization, programming, numerical simulation, and experimental validation are similarly relevant across both specializations.
This integration gives MAE students a broad understanding of contemporary engineering development while allowing them to build deeper expertise in either mechanical simulation and product design or automotive safety and vehicle assessment.
Industry Experience and Research
A distinctive characteristic of the MAE program is the connection between university education and professional engineering practice.
For the Master’s program, TGGS currently provides several study-plan options. The research-only route focuses on research throughout the program. The academic coursework route combines advanced coursework with an industrial internship and Master’s thesis, while a professional route combines coursework, internship, and a Master Project.
Under the coursework, internship, and thesis structure, students normally complete advanced coursework during the first year, followed by an industrial internship of at least 18 weeks and a Master’s thesis during the second year.
The internship and research components provide opportunities for students to apply what they have learned to actual industrial and research problems. Depending on the project and available collaboration, this experience may take place with TGGS research groups, industrial companies, research institutions, or international partners.
Preparing Engineers for Future Mobility and Advanced Industry
Mechanical and automotive engineering is changing rapidly.
Digital product development, multiphysics simulation, artificial intelligence, electric mobility, advanced materials, vehicle automation, intelligent safety systems, and increasingly demanding safety standards are changing both how products are developed and what engineers are expected to know.
The MAE program addresses this transition by combining engineering fundamentals, advanced computational engineering, physical experimentation, industrial practice, and research.
Through Mechanical Engineering Simulation and Design (MESD), students learn how sophisticated engineering products can be conceived, modelled, simulated, optimized, and validated.
Through Automotive Safety and Assessment Engineering (ASAE), students learn how modern vehicles can be developed, tested, evaluated, and improved to achieve higher levels of safety, performance, and technological capability.
Together, the two specializations form an interdisciplinary graduate program designed to prepare engineers not only to work with existing technologies, but also to contribute to the development of the next generation of mechanical systems, vehicles, intelligent mobility solutions, and safer transportation technologies.