As well as studying crash performance at high speed, PSA is also studying the concept of a removable absorber dedicated to low speed impacts (8 km/h to 15 km/h). This part would be fixed between the bumper and the front-end structure.

The requirements for this absorber are the following:​

• at 8 km/h only the absorber participates in the crash and the structure must remain undamaged,
• 15 km/h the absorber is crushed but the deformation of the structure must be limited to the front-end of the rail.

The first phase of the design is based on the results of the PSA shock data-base set up during the EUREKA program CARMAT and which contains multiple information about the crush performances of different materials. Then a kinematic approach enabled the distance required to absorb the crash energy for a given set of parameters to be calculated. Various types of materials were selected to perform design and experimental studies including the optimised steel solution. The Citroën ZX 1.6 i was chosen as the support vehicle for the technical study which is presented in this paper.