Development of a regulation for testing the effectiveness of a rigid side underride protection device (SUPD)

Abstract

The development of a side underride protection device is a crucial aspect for improving the safety of small car to tractortrailer collisions. Devices such as rear underride guards are already implemented and regulated in North America and many places around the world along with front underride devices, which are regulated in Europe. The large and unprotected gap between the rear axle and the kingpin of the trailer remains a hazard for small passenger vehicles passing underneath. To develop devices to prevent such accidents, a regulation for testing the underride guards must be implemented to determine their feasibility. This paper describes the background information and testing procedures of the existing regulations for front and rear underride guards to help develop the side regulation. A finite element tractor-trailer model is presented and a component model based on the trailer is created and validated in order to be used for simulations. Collisions with small passenger cars such as the National Crash Analysis Center's Toyota Yaris and Ford Taurus into rigid walls are conducted and methods are introduced to obtain a quasistatic model from the dynamic crash. Device dimensions are determined using tractor-trailer models in TruckSim in order to obtain the maximum allowable ground clearance of the devices. Feasible rigid guards are then created and tested with the proposed quasistatic regulation and compared to the results obtained from the dynamic tests.