Vehicles must possess adequate front-end stiffness to protect the occupants of the striking vehicle in frontal collisions. At the same time. it is also necessary to reduce the striking vehicle's aggressivity toward other vehicles in rear-end and side impacts. It is important, therefore, to tind a suitable level of front-end stiffness that will satisfy both requirements.

As one approach to finding an appropriate front-end stiffness, analyses were made of the NCAP test reports issued by NHTSA. Investigations were carried out concerning the load generated by the barrier at the time of impact, vehicle displacement relative to time, and dummy injury levels.

Based on the target stiffness obtained from those analyses, improvements were made to the impacter of the deformable moving barrier, and methods for varying the stiffness were investigated. On the basis of the results obtained, this paper proposes a suitable stiffness for the DMB impacter used in vehicle collision testing.