THE OFFSET CRASH AGAINST A DEFORMABLE BARRIER, A MORE REALISTIC FRONTAL IMPACT
The passive safety of passenger cars in frontal collisions is usually assessed by means of crash tests against a flat or angled rigid barrier. With respect to the frequency of asymmetrical frontal impacts in real world accidents, the most important crash test at Mercedes-Benz is an offset test with 40% overlap at 55 km/h against the rigid barrier. The rigid barrier should be replaced by a deformable barrier to further increase the proximity to road accidents of this offset crash. It should simulate the yielding structure involved in a car-to-car crash but at the same time with better efficiency and higher reproducibility. Based on extensive research Mercedes-Benz has defined such a realistic test. Since the deformable element according to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 214 is well known and validated, it was chosen for this purpose. The force/deflection characteristics of the Honeycomb element represent the stiffness of the front end of a medium to large car. First results show that the vehicle deformation patterns are very similar to those found in real-world accidents. Another, also very important result is that the degree of overlap does not significantly influence the load on the occupants, in contrast to the tests against a rigid offset barrier. (A) For the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD 894848.
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Corporate Authors:
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC United States 20590 -
Authors:
- KALLINA, I
- ZEIDLER, F
- BAUMANN, K-H
- SCHEUNERT, D
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Conference:
- PROCEEDINGS OF THE FOURTEENTH INTERNATIONAL TECHNICAL CONFERENCE ON ENHANCED SAFETY OF VEHICLES
- Location: Munich , Germany
- Date: 1994-5-23 to 1994-5-26
- Publication Date: 1995
Language
- English
Media Info
- Features: References;
- Pagination: p. 1300-4
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Serial:
- Issue Number: 94-S8-O-01
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Anthropometry; Automobiles; Conferences; Crash tests; Deformation; Dummies; Evaluation and assessment; Frontal crashes; Loads; Prevention; Safety; Stiffness; Test procedures
- Uncontrolled Terms: Front; Reproducibility
- ITRD Terms: 1618: Anthropometric dummy; 1243: Car; 8525: Conference; 5595: Deformation; 9020: Evaluation (assessment); 9025: Front; 1640: Head on collision; 1648: Impact test (crash); 5567: Load; 9149: Prevention; 5927: Reproducibility; 1665: Safety; 5931: Stiffness
- Subject Areas: Research; Safety and Human Factors; Security and Emergencies;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 00747154
- Record Type: Publication
- Source Agency: Institute for Road Safety Research, SWOV
- Files: ITRD, USDOT
- Created Date: Apr 28 1998 12:00AM