  In this work, we establish a method for abstracting information from Computer
Aided Engineering (CAE) into graphs. Such graph representations of CAE data can
improve design guidelines and support recommendation systems by enabling the
comparison of simulations, highlighting unexplored experimental designs, and
correlating different designs. We focus on the load-path in crashworthiness
analysis, a complex sub-discipline in vehicle design. The load-path is the
sequence of parts that absorb most of the energy caused by the impact. To
detect the load-path, we generate a directed weighted graph from the CAE data.
The vertices represent the vehicle's parts, and the edges are an abstraction of
the connectivity of the parts. The edge direction follows the temporal
occurrence of the collision, where the edge weights reflect aspects of the
energy absorption. We introduce and assess three methods for graph extraction
and an additional method for further updating each graph with the sequences of
absorption. Based on longest-path calculations, we introduce an automated
detection of the load-path, which we analyse for the different graph extraction
methods and weights. Finally, we show how our method for the detection of
load-paths helps in the classification and labelling of CAE simulations.
