Influence of different platen angles and selected roof header reinforcements on the quasi‐static roof strength of a 2003 Ford Explorer FE model

Scheub, Joachim; Tahan, Fadi; Digges, Kennerly; Kan, Cing‐Dao

Affiliations

¹National Crash Analysis Center at George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA

²Physics, Astronomy, and Computational Sciences at the George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

Abstract and keywords

The objective of this study was to analyze the influence of different platen angles of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 216 test and the influence of the resulting load application on roof deformation patterns. Of particular interest was how the strength of the connection between the A‐pillars (roof header) influenced the roof crush performance. A Finite Element based study using the Ford Explorer altered the roof header design and applied High Strength Steel (HSS). Pitch and roll angles of the loading device were varied.

When the pitch angle increases, the strength‐to‐weight ratio (SWR) decreases for all roll angles. The worst case scenario was with a platen angle of 25° roll and 10° pitch. Once the connection between the A‐pillars was improved, the SWR increased for high roll angles. The combination of a redesigned roof header and the use of HSS led to the highest SWR improvements ranging from 12.9% to 23.1%. The fixed platen angles for FMVSS 216 test appear to provide little incentive to improve the overall roof structure by load transfer to the opposite side A‐pillar. Actual rollover accident subjects the roof to a variety of loading angles more extreme than the FMVSS 216 test condition.

Keywords: crashworthiness, finite element model, FMVSS 216, quasi‐static roof crush, roof header reinforcement

Links

URL: http://www.ircobi.org/downloads/irc13/pdf_files/42.pdf

Cited By (1)

Year	Entry
2014	Tahan FJ, Digges K, Kan C, Grzebieta R, Bambach M. Assessing chest injuries for different pitch angles and drop heights rollovers using strengthened roof. In: Proceedings of the 2014 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Injury. September 10-12, 2014; Berlin, Germany.41-50.