Vehicle Mass, Stiffness and Their Relationship

Vehicle stiffness is a commonly used parameter in the field of vehicle safety. But a single-valued “stiffness”, although well defined for the linear case, is not well defined for non-linear systems, such as vehicle crashes. Moreover, the relationship between vehicle stiffness and mass remains confusing. One previous work ["Vehicle Mass and Stiffness: Search for a Relationship", G. Nusholtz, SAE2004, 04CONG--17, 2004 SAE International Congress, March, Detroit, USA, 2004] addresses this issue. Multiple definitions of stiffness were used to address the lack of a clear definition of stiffness. The R-squared values for the correlation between mass and each stiffness measure were presented. The results showed that no clear relationship existed between mass and any of the stiffness measures. The results from a statistical analysis indicated that there were differences in stiffness between different types of vehicles. This paper extends the same research by including a significant amount of new data samples as well as some different analysis procedures. Results show that mass is poorly correlated to stiffness and for some vehicle types mass correlates better to vehicle crush than to stiffness. In addition, it is shown that even without a well-defined definition of stiffness different levels of stiffness can be defined and differences in stiffness between different vehicle types can be quantitatively and qualitatively established.

• Record URL:
  http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-01/esv/esv19/05-0413-O.pdf
• 
• Corporate Authors:

  National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Nusholtz, Guy S
  • Xu, Lan
  • Shi, Yibing
  • Di Domenico, Laura
• Conference:
  • 19th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV)
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2005-6-6 to 2005-6-9
• Publication Date: 2005-6

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 10p
• Monograph Title: Proceedings - 19th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV), Washington, D.C., June 6-9, 2005

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Correlation analysis; Motor vehicles; Stiffness; Vehicle safety; Vehicle weight
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment; I91: Vehicle Design and Safety;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01066528
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 05-0413
• Files: TRIS, USDOT
• Created Date: May 31 2007 3:30PM