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.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Features: References;
  • Pagination: p. 1300-4
  • Serial:
    • Issue Number: 94-S8-O-01

Subject/Index Terms

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