Evaluation of structural parameters for vehicle crash compatibility

Abstract

Several numeric measures have been proposed in the past for the assessment of crash compatibility between two vehicles of dissimilar sizes. These proposed measures are generally intended to quantify the dynamic behavior of the vehicle structure in a crash and they intend to measure either the location of application of vehicle's crash forces, or the peak values of the forces and their distribution pattern such as the co-efficient of variance and homogeneity. This paper presents results for the height of force and for the load distribution patterns for several vehicles from crash tests and from finite element simulations. Results were obtained for crashes against rigid barrier instrumented with two different sizes of load cells to assess the effect of the load cell size on these parameters and on the relationship of these parameters to the vehicle structure. Investigations were also conducted for the case when a deformable face is added to the load cell barrier and results are presented assessing the influence of the deformable face on the measurement of height of force and of load distribution patterns. The relationship between the vehicle structure, the various proposed parameters, their measured values, the inherent errors and the effect on self-protection as well as partner protection in vehicle-to-vehicle crashes are discussed.