A Suggestion of New Impact Test Apparatus for Analyzing Effective Parameters during Impacts Containing Relative Movement

One of the major considerations in designing of automotive structures for crash energy management is designing the vehicle in a way that the acceleration imposed on passenger and car is reduced to the minimum possible value. Many factors influence the characteristics of the vehicle and passengers crash pulse. Currently full-scale barrier impacts, component tests and sled tests are used for investigating crash, but unfortunately, these experimental ways are expensive. On the other hand, conventiional experimental techniques for studying impacts are not convenient in a case that the relative movement during impact is existed and two impacts happened one after other. This paper presents a new impact test apparatus, and then by using this apparatus the effectiveness of some parameters on the vehicle and occupant deceleration is investigated. The experiments on vehicle and occupants deceleration were performed by making use of data acquisition method on the cart, which is equipped with accelerometer. Subsequently, the different nondestructive tests are established. The results illustrate that even a small increase in impact velocity (about ٥km/hr) could turn an easy survival crash into one with high risk of serious injury. Furthermore, decreasing amount of cart deceleration by using energy absorbing elements is not always effective in decreasing amount of free occupant deceleration where the relative movement between occupant and car bodies is existed.

Keywords:

sled test , lumped parameter model (LPM) , impact test , vehicle crash modeling