Collision safety of a hard shell low mass vehicle

Kaeser, Robert; Walz, Felix H.; Brunner, Anton

Affiliations

¹Institute for Lightweight Structures, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Leonhardstr. 25, CH-8092 Zurich

²Institute for Legal Medicine, University of Zürich-Irchel, Winterthurerstr. 190, CH-8057 Zürich

³Department of Accident Research, Winterthur Insurance Company, General;Guisanstr. 40, CH-8401 Winterthur

Abstract

Low mass vehicles and in particular low mass electric vehicles as produced today in very small quantities are in general not designed for crashworthiness in collisions. Particular problems of compact low mass cars are: reduced length of the car front, low mass compared to the other vehicles and heavy batteries in the case of an electric car. With the intention of studying design improvements, three frontal crash tests have been run last year: the frost one with a commercial light weight electric car, the second with a reinforced version of the same car and the last one with a car based on a different structural design with a “hard shell” car body. Crash tests showed that the latter solution made better use of the small available zone for continuous energy absorption.

The paper discusses further the problem of frontal collisions between vehicles of different weight and in particular the side collision. A side collision test was run with the “hard shell“ vehicle following the ECE lateral impact test procedure at 50 km/h and lead to results for the EuroSID 1 - dummy well bellow current injury tolerance criteria.

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Year	Entry
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Cited By (4)

Year	Entry
1998	Mizuno K, Kajzer J. The compatibility of mini cars in traffic accidents. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). May 31–June 4, 1998; Windsor, Ontario, Canada.715-728.
1993	Niederer PF, Kaeser R, Walz FH, Brunner A, Faerber E. Compatibility considerations for low-mass rigid-belt vehicles. In: Proceedings of the 1993 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 8-10, 1993; Eindhoven, The Netherlands.433-444.
1995	Kaeser R, Muser M, Spiess O, Frei P, Guenat JM, Wingeier L. Passive safety potential of low mass vehicles. In: Proceedings of the 1995 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 13-15, 1995; Brunnen, Switzerland.337-352.
1997	Fachbach B, Steffan H, Staska G. Occupant protection by a moveable seat system. In: Proceedings of the 1997 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 24-26, 1997; Hannover, Germany.399-408.