Using an Extendable Bumper With an Aid of Vehicle Dynamics Control System to Improve the Occupant Safety in Frontal Vehicle-to-Vehicle Collision Scenario

This paper aims to improve vehicle crashworthiness using vehicle dynamics control systems (VDCS) integrated with an extendable front-end structure (extendable bumper). The work carried out in this paper includes developing and analyzing a new vehicle dynamics/crash mathematical model and a multi-body occupant mathematical model in case of vehicle-to-vehicle full frontal impact. The first model integrates a vehicle dynamics model with the vehicle's front-end structure to define the vehicle body crash kinematic parameters. In this model, the anti-lock braking system (ABS) and the active suspension control system (ASC) are co-simulated, and its associated equations of motion are developed and solved numerically. The second model is used to capture the occupant kinematics during full frontal collision. The simulations show considerable improvements using VDCS with and without the extendable bumper (EB), which produces additional significant improvements for both vehicle body acceleration and intrusion