Frontal crashes can occur in numerous ways, including differences in degree of overlap, impact speed and angle of interaction. This poses special challenges with respect to structural design as well as occupant protection.

Traditionally, regulatory and consumer information crash testing procedures mostly focus on full frontal overlap and 40% overlap. In the real world, small overlap crashes where load paths of less than 30% of the vehicle’s width and crashes with no front longitudinal members engagement are shown to represent an important share of frontal crashes resulting in occupant injuries. Thus it is essential to understand which impact configuration that would capture the important characteristics of small overlap crashes, yet being representative for a variety of car-to-car frontal impact scenarios, providing a complement to standardized frontal impact testing.

Based on real world crash data, important car-tocar frontal impact scenarios are identified and mechanisms studied. Full scale crash tests and finite element crash simulations are performed in order to evaluate different car to car configurations, forming the basis for studying structural load paths, focusing on structural design and occupant protection.

A crash test method, addressing 25% overlap against a fixed rigid barrier with a radius of 150 mm is found representative for a variety of car-to-car frontal impact scenarios, reflects mechanisms in real world crash situations and is a good complement to conventional frontal impact test methods. These findings support the findings by Planath et al. (1993), regarding Severe Partial Overlap Collision (SPOC), with 25% overlap against a fixed rigid barrier with velocities up to 64 km/h.