IMPACT MOMENT COEFFICIENT FOR VEHICLE COLLISION ANALYSIS

In all real collisions contact is over a surface, and in many vehicle collisions, momentary or permanent interlocking of deformed parts occurs over this surface. This causes a moment to develop whose impulse can significantly affect the dynamics; most authors neglect or ignore this moment. In this paper, the equations of impact of two vehicles are derived including the moment impulse. An impact moment coefficient is defined. The value of this coefficient determines the extent to which a moment is developed between the two vehicles during impact. Two examples are presented. The first is a simple classical problem of two rigid bodies impacting over a common surface and is presented to illustrate the concept of the impact moment coefficient. The second example uses data from an actual collision of two automobiles and shows that in accident reconstruction problems, an a priori value of the impact moment coefficient is often not needed.

• Corporate Authors:

  Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)

  400 Commonwealth Drive
  Warrendale, PA  United States  15096
• Authors:
  • Brach, R M
• Publication Date: 1977

Media Info

• Features: References;
• Pagination: 8 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Automobiles; Crashes; Crashworthiness; Engineering moments; Mathematical models; Safety factors; Traffic crashes
• Uncontrolled Terms: Impact factor
• Old TRIS Terms: Moments
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00158319
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Engineering Index
• Report/Paper Numbers: SAE 770014 Preprint
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Oct 13 1977 12:00AM