An Analysis of the Safety of Low-Speed Electric Vehicles in the Event of a Frontal Collision

Low-speed electric vehicles (LSEVs) are very popular in the less-developed area in China, and the industrial scale of LSEVs is gradually expanding due to their great fit to the short-distance urban and rural travel and low purchase cost. However, the R&D strength and design investment of LSEV enterprises are uneven, and there are generally problems of unreasonable body structure and poor collision safety performance among LSEVs. In the transition period when the national mandatory standards are being developed, in order to make the LSEV enterprises complete the technology upgrade, this paper will build a FEM model based on a certain type of mass production vehicle and conduct collision simulation test to analyze the weak structure of the original structure and propose a structural optimization. After analyzing the development background and technical requirements of LSEVs, this paper initially establishes the expected goals of LSEV frontal collision safety performance and builds the FEM model based on Hyperworks and LS-Dyna. By analyzing the test results, it is found that the energy-absorbing effect of the original frontal structure is insufficient, resulting in a high damage value of the driver when the collision occurs. In order to overcome excessive acceleration, this paper optimizes the original bumper and the length of the energy-absorbing tubes in the frontal structure and adjusts some parameters of steel-pipe body frame. In order to reduce the amount of compression in the driver’s chest, a collapsible directional column will also be used. After optimization, the peak collision acceleration is reduced from the original 80 g to 67.1 g, and the time to fully absorb the collision energy is shortened from 65 ms to 40 ms, which significantly optimizes the safety performance of frontal collision.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.4271/2021-01-5011
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/01487191
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Abstract reprinted with permission of SAE International.
• Authors:
  • Wei, Xincheng
  • Ma, Zhixiong
  • Zhu, Xichan
  • Zheng, Yuqing
• Conference:
  • 2020 International Automotive Security, Safety and Testing Congress
  • Location: Shanghai
  • Date: 2020-11-10
• Publication Date: 2021-1-22

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References;
• Serial:
  • SAE Technical Paper
  • Publisher: Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
  • ISSN: 0148-7191
  • EISSN: 2688-3627
  • Serial URL: http://papers.sae.org/

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bumpers; Electric vehicles; Energy absorption; Finite element method; Frontal crashes; Mathematical models; Simulation; Vehicle bodies; Vehicle safety
• Identifier Terms: Hyperworks (software); LS-DYNA (Computer program)
• Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01774487
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: SAE International
• Report/Paper Numbers: 2021-01-5011
• Files: TRIS, SAE
• Created Date: Jun 20 2021 4:49PM