Title: A modified rigid barrier for improved assessment of occupant injury in incompatible frontal collisions

Authors: Anindya Deb, Kalyan S. Cheruvu, Shi-jie Ruan

Addresses: Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India. ' Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India. ' Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin 300222, China

Abstract: Recent statistics on road traffic fatalities indicate that occupants of low ride-height cars are generally at a disadvantage in frontal collisions against incompatible vehicles such as SUVs and pickup trucks. To overcome the inadequacy of current vehicle crash safety tests, it has been recently shown that a stepped rigid barrier (SRB) can be a cost-effective tool for assessing the safety performance of a unibody car in collision against a body-on-frame pickup truck. However, the potential of the SRB was shown in terms of its ability to better represent the severe upper body deformation a car can experience during collision against a pickup truck. It has been demonstrated here that new car assessment programme injury parameters also compare well in car-to-truck and car against the previously developed SRB collisions. The assessment of the SRB is done with the help of the explicit finite element analysis solver of LS-DYNA 960.

Keywords: incompatible collisions; NCAP; new car assessment programme; simulation; SRB; stepped rigid barrier; vehicle safety; frontal collisions; injury assessment; occupant injury; safety performance; unibody cars; body-on-frame pickup trucks; upper body deformation; finite element analysis; FEA; vehicle crash tests.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVS.2008.025074

International Journal of Vehicle Safety, 2008 Vol.3 No.4, pp.319 - 337

Published online: 11 May 2009 *

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