Development and validation of a reference vehicle for future research in passive safety

Adolph, Thorsten; Damm, Richard; Kanjuparambil, Nimoy; Langer, Ulrich; Meyna, Arno; Huster, Daniel

Affiliations

¹Federal Highway Research Institute, BASt, Germany

²Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development, Germany

³University of Applied Sciences Cologne, Germany

⁴University of Wuppertal, Germany

⁵University of Applied Sciences Dortmund, Germany

Abstract

The objective was to develop and validate a crash trolley (reference vehicle) equipped with a compartment and a full restraint system for driver and front seat passenger which can be used in full scale crash testing. Furthermore, the crash trolley should have a suspension to show rotation and nick effects similar to real vehicles.

Within the development phase the reference vehicle was build based on a European family car. Special attention was needed to provide appropriate strength to the trolley and its suspension. The reference vehicle is equipped with a restraint system consisting of airbags, pedals, seats, dashboard, and windscreen. On the front of the vehicle different crash barriers can be installed to provide miscellaneous deceleration pulses.

For the validation phase a series of low and high speed crash tests with HIII dummies were conducted and compared with full scale tests. For the comparison deceleration pulse, dummy numbers and vehicle movement were analyzed.

Validation tests with velocities up to 60 km/h showed promising results. The compartment and the suspension systems stayed stable. Rotation effects were comparable with full scale car crash tests. The airbags and seat belt system worked reasonable. The acceleration pulse compared to an Euro NCAP test had a similar characteristic but was in general slightly lower.

After the successful validation the reference vehicle is already in use in different studies in the field of vehicle safety research at BASt.

Links

URL: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv23/23ESV-000446.pdf

Cited Works (1)

Year	Entry
2007	Schram R, Versmissen T. The development of a mobile deformable barrier test procedure. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 18-21, 2007; Lyon, France.