Ensuring the safety of vehicle’s occupants during a crash is of foremost importance during the vehicle design process. Computer modeling of crashworthiness decreases the design cost and empowers the designers to explore new concepts with more confidence that their final product would be feasible and would perform to design specifications. To capture the complexity of vehicle deformations in com...

In recent years there has been an increased effort to investigate and improve the crashworthiness of passenger rail vehicles in the United States. The structural crashworthiness requirements for new rail vehicles are changing to include specifications for crash energy management and crush zones rather than primarily specifications of vehicle and component strengths. In addition, the structural ...

Automotive seats are tested for compliance with federal motor vehicle safety standards (FMVSS) to assure safety during impact. Many wheelchair users rely upon their wheelchairs to serve as vehicle seats. However, the crashworthiness of these wheelchairs during impact is often unknown. This study evaluated the crashworthiness of five combinations of wheelchair back support surfaces and attachmen...

Ambulance vehicles are a unique passenger environment with complex crashworthiness and occupant protection issues, eg. occupants in various orientations, unique human factors aspects and an array of aftermarket interior modifications. In the USA, ambulance vehicle occupant protection, crashworthiness and safety testing lags 30 years behind current general automotive safety technology. This pape...

Safer Vehicles is a cornerstone of the Safe Systems approach to road safety. The Australasian New Car Assessment Program is one of the premier programs under the safer vehicles banner. It aims to improve the safety of new vehicles entering the fleet through identifying objective design and performance criteria for manufacturers to improve vehicle safety and publishing information on the relativ...

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Crashworthiness can be defined as the ability of an aircraft and its internal systems to protect occupants from injury in the event of a crash. In general, injury in aircraft crashes can be considered to arise from three distinct sources: (1) excessive acceleration forces; (2) direct trauma from contact with injurious surfaces, and; (3) exposure to environmental factors such as fire, smoke, wat...

Previous research [1] using an advanced multi-domain topology optimization technique has shown a great promise for the crashworthiness design using the new technique. In this paper, we try to answer some fundamental questions regarding the crashworthiness design, which include: 1) what are the fundamental crash mechanisms of a general crash process; 2) how the uncertainties in the system will a...