Development of a Structural Interaction Assessment Criteria Using Progressive Deformable Barrier Data

Structural interaction has been one of the critical issues for improved frontal impact protection. An evaluation procedure for structural interaction has been difficult to develop using objective test data procedures. While previous research with the PDB barrier has been promising based on subjective evaluations, an objective assessment criteria has been elusive. Part of the EU project FIMCAR focused on the development of an assessment procedure to assess important frontal impact characteristics like load spreading.Test and simulation data from vehicle impacts with the PDB or MPDB were collected for different vehicle models, spanning a range of vehicle masses and vehicle classes. Available car-to-car crash tests were also collected for reference. The main information analyzed w.r.t. the assessment of load spreading was the deformation pattern of the PDB barrier after a test. These deformation plots were reviewed and subjectively assessed by experts. The subjective assessments were used to develop key characteristics that should be detected by a numerical assessment of the 3D data. These subjective assessments were then compared to different objective (numerical) assessments for the barriers to ensure correlation of the results and then validated with available car-car data. Assessment of the influence of assessment area and scanning resolution were also performed