Evaluation of a novel passive safety concept for motorcycles with combined multi-body and finite element simulations

Maier, Steffen; Doléac, Laurent; Hertneck, Holger; Stahlschmidt, Sebastian; Fehr, Jörg

Affiliations

¹Institute of Engineering and Computational Mechanics (ITM) at the University of Stuttgart, Germany

²Doléac Models, Ostfildern, Germany

³SASTEC GmbH, Markgroeningen, Germany

⁴DYNAmore GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany

Abstract and keywords

The objective of this research is to investigate a novel passive safety concept for motorcycles that, in the event of an accident, guides and controls the trajectory of the rider and thereby enables better protection with passive safety systems. The concept, a newly designed motorcycle body in combination with thigh belts, multiple airbags, impact protectors and side protection structure, restrains the rider to the motorcycle and the motorcycle and its safety equipment form a protective cover around the rider.

In this study, the motorcycle and safety concept are entirely modelled in a combined multi-body and finite element approach in the MADYMO software environment. The motorcycle and rider surrogate, a dummy, were simulated in seven accident scenarios for motorcycles colliding with passenger cars, according to ISO13232. The crashworthiness, i.e. the kinematics, the force interactions and the biomechanical loads on the main body parts of the rider, were analysed with respect to the biomechanical limits.

Restraining the rider with belts and decelerating the resulting upper body motion relative to the motorcycle with multiple surrounding airbags led to a guided and controlled dummy trajectory for the primary accident phase, showing promising performance of the innovative solution for rider protection for multiple accident scenarios.

Keywords: Motorcycle safety; motorcycle to car collisions; multi-body simulations; passive safety; vulnerable road users

Links

URL: http://www.ircobi.org/wordpress/downloads/irc20/pdf-files/38.pdf

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Cited By (2)

Year	Entry
2021	Maier S, Doléac L, Hertneck H, Stahlschmidt S, Fehr J. Finite element simulations of motorcyclist interaction with a novel passive safety concept for motorcycles. In: Proceedings of the 2021 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Injury. September 8-10, 2021; Online.60-78.
2022	Maier S, Kempter F, Kronwitter S, Fehr J. Positioning and simulation of human body models on a motorcycle with a novel restraint system. In: Proceedings of the 2022 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Injury. September 14-16, 2022; Porto, Portugal.82-96.