STUDY OF AUTOMOBILE MOTION AFTER SIDE-IMPACT COLLISIONS

A STUDY WAS CONDUCTED OF THE MOTION OF TWO MODEL VEHICLES AFTER SIDE-IMPACT COLLISIONS. EXPERIMENTS WERE CONDUCTED, IN WHICH MODEL VEHICLES WERE COLLIDED UNDER LABORATORY CONDITIONS TO SIMULATE FULL-SIZE INTERSECTION COLLISIONS. THE DATA OBTAINED ABOUT THE VEHICLES' MOTIONS WERE COMPARED WITH DATA OBTAINED FROM FULL-SIZE COLLISION TESTS. THE RESULTS OF COLLISION EXPERIMENTS WITH SIMPLIFIED MINIATURE MODELS CORRELATED ACCEPTABLY WITH THE CORRESPONDING RESULTS OF FULL-SIZE COLLISION TESTS. THE OBTAINED DATA OF THE MODEL VEHICLES MOTION WERE ALSO COMPARED TO THE PREDICTED TRAJECTORIES AS DERIVED FROM A THEORETICAL ANALYSIS AND SHOWED DEFINITE SIMILARITY IN MOST EXPERIMENTS. THE TWO MODELS WERE SCALED TO 1/16 OF THE LINEAR DIMENSIONS OF AN AVERAGE AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE, WITH PROPORTIONAL LENGTH, WIDTH, LOCATION OF CENTER OF GRAVITY AND RADIUS OF GYRATION, AND WEIGHED 1/156 OF THE ACTUAL VEHICLE WEIGHT. THE REQUIRED DATA WERE OBTAINED BY PHOTOGRAPHING THE VEHICLES MOTION, USING STROBOSCOPIC LIGHT IN PREDETERMINED FREQUENCIES. FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHS THE PATTERNS OF THE VEHICLES AFTER THE COLLISION WERE DETERMINED. THE PHOTOGRAPHS ALSO SHOWED THE INSTANTANEOUS POSITIONS OF THE MODELS (DISTANCE FROM COLLISION SITE, ANGLE OF SPIN AND POLAR ANGLE) AT EVERY DESIRED MOMENT AFTER THE COLLISION. THE EXPERIMENTS DID NOT INDICATE ANY DIRECT RELATION BETWEEN COLLISION SPEEDS AND THE COLLISION PATTERNS, BUT INDICATED THAT THE SPINNING OF BOTH VEHICLES INCREASED WITH THE COLLISION SPEED. AT THE SAME TIME IT WAS SHOWN THAT FOR A GIVEN COLLISION SPEED, THE SPINNING OF THE STRUCK VEHICLE INCREASED, WHILE SPINNING OF THE STRIKING VEHICLE DECREASED AS THE STRIKING POINT MOVED BACKWARDS ALONG THE STRUCK CAR'S SIDE. /AUTHOR/

• Supplemental Notes:
  • 100 Pp, 28 FIG, 6 TAB, 8 REF
• Corporate Authors:

  University of California, Los Angeles

  Los Angeles, CA  United States 
• Authors:
  • Link, D
• Publication Date: 1968

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Alternatives analysis; Angularity; Automobiles; Correlation analysis; Crashes; Forecasting; Impacts; Intersections; Laboratory tests; Photography; Point demerit systems; Side crashes
• Uncontrolled Terms: Angles; Model tests
• Old TRIS Terms: Points; Spinning; Stroboscopes
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00223046
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Nat Safety Council Safety Res Info Serv
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Mar 25 1970 12:00AM