A Parameter Identification Method for Road Accidents Reconstruction

Abstract

The paper deals with the mathematical reconstruction of road accidents. Often, many of the relevant parameters for an accurate simulation are not known. The aim of the paper is to introduce and validate a new method to identify these (many) relevant parameters, such as exact impact location, tyre-road friction, ... The velocity of the two vehicles before the impact are computed by applying the principle of conservation of momentum and angular momentum and by estimating the kinetic energy losses. The identification process is based on a Global Approximation technique. Up to 17 numerical values pertaining to both running conditions before impact and parameters can be defined accurately and in a relatively short time. The definition of the 17 numerical values is made on the basis of the known data coming from the positions of the vehicles at rest and from tyre marks (if present and measured). The method has undergone a preliminary validation. Two case studies are presented which show the effectiveness of the identification method.

The effect of mass properties on road accident reconstruction

“…By this approach, a mathematical model of the vehicles involved in the accident has to be used. Many mathematical models of colliding vehicles can be found in the literature [6,9,13,25,29,30,39,40,46]. The impact dynamics can be reconstructed by applying the basic principles of mechanics [13,25], on the basis of the data coming from the positions of the vehicles at rest and other data measured at the accident site and on the vehicles.…”

Optimization and integration of ground vehicle systems

“…Typically, the simulation time for the pure numerical model is a small fraction (1/10 to 1/10,000) of the simulation time needed by the original model [65,69,72].…”