Designers of frontal car structures are faced with conflicting requirements of the full, offset, severe and moderate crashes. These conflicts impose a trade off between stiff structure to reduce intrusion and softer structures to prevent violating the G-limit of the passenger compartment. Requirements for smart structures to adapt to various crash conditions have been demonstrated.

This research seeks to extend the deformation properties of the frontal structure by introducing ‘hydraulic smart structures’ within the front part of the main longitudinal members. This allows the smart structure to increase its energy absorption capacity, change its deformation properties and adapt to varying collision conditions.

It is shown that Smart Structures is capable of reducing agressivity of large vehicles towards small cars. It is also shown that Smart Structures provides further protection to the occupants incase of more severe crashes. A Smart Vehicle involved in head-on collision with standard passive vehicle produces significantly lower intrusions than that of the partner passive vehicle. Smart Structures proved superior to the traditional passive structures by absorbing more energy for the same crush zone distance, speed sensitive and controllable structure.