The passive safety of passenger cars in frontal collisions is usually assessed by means of crash tests against a flat or angled rigid barrier. With respect to the frequency of asymmetrical frontal impacts in real world accidents, the most important crash test at Mercedes-Benz is an offset test with 40% overlap at 55 km/h against the rigid barrier

To further increase the proximity to road accidents of this offset crash the rigid barrier should be replaced by a deformable barrier. It should simulate the yielding structure involved in a cztr-to-czu' crash but at the same time with better efficiency and higher reproducibility.

Based on extensive research Mercedes-Benz hm;​ defined such a realistic test. Since the deformable element according to FMVSS 214 is well known and validated, it was chosen for this purpose. The force/deflection characteristics of the Honeycomb element represent the stiffness of the front and of a medium to large cur.

First results show that the vehicle deformation patterns are very similar to those found in real-world accidents. Another, also very important result is that the degree of overlap does not significantly influence the load on the occupants, in contrast to the tests against a rigid offset barrier which are more sensitive to different degrees of overlap.

Impact parameters as overlap, velocity zuid barrier shape were preliminary intemallly defined and we discussed in detail in this paper.