Title: Estimation of energy-absorption space for pedestrian leg protection of car front-end structures

Authors: Jun Huang; Yong Xia; Bingbing Nie; Qing Zhou

Addresses: State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China ' State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China ' State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China ' State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

Abstract: For either the pedestrian's head or lower limb protection, Energy-Absorption (EA) space needs to be estimated for designing pedestrian-friendly front-end structures in the early stage of new vehicle development. However, existing methods in literature so far to estimate EA space for pedestrian lower-limb protection look over-simplified. This paper proposes a more reasonable equation to estimate EA space based on a Finite Element (FE) analysis. The energy-related parameters in the EA estimate equation were statistically determined with a parametric study. The detailed process of the legform-to-bumper impact test was also analysed, which may provide more insights into engineering design.

Keywords: pedestrian protection; legform impactor; energy absorption space; front-end design; energy transformation; free-free beams; vehicle front-end structures; leg protection; vehicle safety; vehicle design; finite element analysis; FEA; impact testing; bumper impact.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVD.2012.049156

International Journal of Vehicle Design, 2012 Vol.60 No.1/2, pp.20 - 38

Received: 23 Apr 2011
Accepted: 05 Sep 2011
Published online: 23 Apr 2013 *

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