NHTSA’s recent vehicle crash test program on compatibility in front-to-front impacts

Patel, Sanjay; Smith, David; Prasad, Aloke; Mohan, Pradeep

Affiliations

¹U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)

²FHWA/NHTSA National Crash Analysis Center, The George Washington University, United States of America

Abstract

This paper presents results from NHTSA's light vehicle compatibility crash testing program during 2005 and 2006. During these years, NHTSA Research has continued to collect full frontal rigid wall data in conjunction with the U.S. New Car Assessment Program (USNCAP), it has supplemented this with additional rigid barrier data to explore barrier design options, and it has developed and conducted vehicle-to-vehicle crash tests to explore the potential for reducing injuries by improving the crash compatibility between light vehicles. This effort was begun by first identifying the most promising metrics to characterize full frontal crash compatibility using data taken during frontal USNCAP testing, selecting crash test vehicles based on the metrics, and finally, performing full-frontal vehicle-to-vehicle crash tests to evaluate the probability of belted occupant injury and fatality in the crash vehicles. The test series provided evidence that by maintaining structural alignment and matching frontal energy absorptions, the probability of injuries/fatalities in both the Light Trucks and Vans (LTVs) and passenger car can be significantly reduced.

Carmakers are now voluntarily addressing compatibility in the U.S. by aligning their structures and implementing Secondary Energy Absorbing Structures (SEAS) and Advanced Compatibility Engineering (ACE). Vehicle-to-vehicle tests were conducted to understand how these new concepts perform and what sort of additional measures and performance tests may be needed. The results of these tests are presented and discussed in the paper. The advent of SEAS structures also presents challenges to characterize and measure their performance. A new rigid override barrier (ORB) concept has been developed and tested for this purpose. This paper also summarizes and discusses the preliminary design and testing of the ORB.

Finite element studies of vehicle-to-barrier interactions suggest that the axial load cell barriers used prior to 2006 introduced low estimates of force heights on the barrier. In order to understand the error content in previous estimates of force height, several vehicles were crash tested into a highresolution barrier, which is a 9x16 array of 125x125 mm single-axis load cells, each rated for measuring up to 300kN of compression perpendicular to its face. The results of this crash test program and their implications are discussed in this paper.

Links

URL: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv20/07-0231-O.pdf

Cited Works (1)

Year	Entry
2005	Verma MK, Lavelle JP, Tan SA, Lange RC. Injury patterns and effective countermeasures for vehicle collision compatibility. In: Proceedings of the 19th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 6-9, 2005; Washington, DC.

Cited By (8)

Year	Entry
2007	Delannoy P, Martin T, Meyerson S, Summers L, Wiacek C. PDB barrier face evaluation by DSCR and NHTSA’s joint research program. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 18-21, 2007; Lyon, France.
2009	Yamaguchi A, Hitotsumatsu A, Okabe T. A proposal for an improved method of evaluating vehicle compatibility in full-frontal rigid barrier tests. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 15-18, 2009; Stuttgart, Germany.
2009	Meyerson S, Wiacek C, Delannoy P, Robert G. Evaluation of advanced compatibility frontal structures using the progressive deformable barrier (PDB). In: Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 15-18, 2009; Stuttgart, Germany.
2009	Patel S, Prasad A, Mohan P. NHTSA’s recent test program on vehicle compatibility. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 15-18, 2009; Stuttgart, Germany.
2009	Nusholtz G, Xu L, Velez EL, Hsu T, Kochekseraii SB. Reproducibility of AHOF400 and KW400. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 15-18, 2009; Stuttgart, Germany.
2011	Shin J, Kim HK, Kim YC. Front and side car-to-car cae based crash analysis of different class vehicles. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 13-16, 2011; Washington, DC.
2011	Brewer J, Patel S, Summers S, Prasad A, Mohan P. Accuracy of AHOF400 with moment measuring load cell barrier. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 13-16, 2011; Washington, DC.
2015	Wiacek C, Nagabhushana V, Rockwell T, Summers S, Zhao L, Collins LA. Evaluation of frontal crash stiffness measures from the U.S. New Car Assessment Program. In: Proceedings of the 24th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 8-11, 2015; Gothenburg, Sweden.