The majority of pedestrian fatalities and injuries are caused by vehicle-pedestrian accidents. Recently, it has been recognized as a serious problem. Injuries of occupants in a vehicle have been decreased considerably. However, efforts for protection of pedestrians are still insufficient. These days, many advanced industries are striving for a better protection of pedestrians by using an active hood lift system, rather than reforming the existing structure. In this research, the active hood lift system is designed to enhance the performance for protection. The active hood lift system is analyzed by using the nonlinear finite element method. An optimization problem is formulated by incorporation of the analysis results. Orthogonal arrays are utilized to solve the formulated problem. An iterative optimization algothrithm using orthogonal arrays is utilized for design in the discrete space. It is found that the method can remarkably decrease the number of function evaluations.