Pre-Crash Systems (PCS) integrate the features of active and passive safety systems to reduce both crash and injury severity. Upon detection of an impending collision, PCS can provide an early warning to the driver and activate automatic braking to reduce the crash severity for the subject vehicle. PCS can also activate the seatbelt pretensioners prior to impact. This paper identifies the oppor...

Evaluations of crash protection safety features require measures for quantifying impact severity. Velocity change (delta-V) is the major descriptor of collision severity used in most real-world crash databases. One of the limitations of delta-V is that it does not account for the time over which the crash pulse occurs (delta-t). Late model GM vehicles equipped with event data recorders capture ...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is conducting a research program to investigate the crash compatibility of passenger cars, light trucks and vans (LTV’s) in vehicle-to-vehicle collisions. NHTSA has conducted a series of eight full-scale vehicle-to-vehicle crash tests to evaluate vehicle compatibility issues. Tests were conducted using four bullet vehicles representing ...

Abstract The sudden impact during a collision of an automobile may cost the life passengers. Several researchers are working to design materials and structures which can absorb impact-energy before passing it One such solution is crash-box-structure placed primarily on frontal side, in-between bumper main part automobile. crash-box-structure’s ability energy influenced by its deformation-proper...

Development of frontal impact airbag sensor algorithms/calibrations requires crash signals, which can be obtained from vehicle crash testing and/or CAE simulations. This paper presents the development of finite element sensor models to generate CAE simulated crash pulses/signals at the sensing location during frontal impacts. These signals will be evaluated for potential used in the airbag sens...

The size and shape of occupants dictates their biomechanical response in any frontal crash. Seatbelt is the primary occupant restraint equipment that reduces risk of serious injuries. The biomechanical response of the occupant is further improved in presence of airbag and advance technologies such as load limiter and pretensioner. Sufficient research and tests are available to assess the biomec...

The most important factor in predicting the risk of injury or death in a frontal crash is the crash severity, which is expressed as the velocity change, or delta-V, experienced by the vehicle during the crash. The National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) is the largest database in the world linking injury outcomes with delta-Vs, which are obtained from field reconstructions. The accuracy of t...

This study has investigated the feasibility of estimating chest acceleration from the pelvic acceleration and shoulder belt forces measured on a vehicle occupant exposed to a frontal crash. The method of estimating chest acceleration is based upon a simple two-mass one-dimensional model of a vehicle occupant in which pelvic acceleration and shoulder belt force are applied as forcing functions. ...

The project “Improvement of Vehicle Crash Compatibility through the development of Crash Test Procedures” (VC-Compat) is a research activity sponsored under the European Commission 5 Framework Programme. It consists of two parallel research activities, one focusing on car-to-car compatibility and the other on car-to-truck compatibility. The main objective of the car-to-car research is the devel...