Car-to-Truck Frontal Crash Compatibility
Ladda ner
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Master Thesis
Master Thesis
Program
Automotive engineering (MPAUT), MSc
Publicerad
2012
Författare
Lefer, Bertrand
Rebolloso, Ivan Medina
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
For the last five years, are average of 38 500 people have been killed each year in Europe in road traffic accidents and, even if Heavy Goods Vehicles represent only 1% of the vehicle registered, they have been involved in more than 5000 fatal accidents in 2009. Among these accidents involving trucks, 65% involved the truck front. The severity of these crashes can be explained by the large mass difference between cars and trucks that inevitably leads to higher deceleration pulses for the passenger car; most of times followed by major deformations of the car passenger compartment. In the worse frontal crash cases, the car ends under the truck. To reduce the risk of trucks overriding passenger cars and reduce the crash severity, so-called Front Underrun Protection Systems have been developed and are now compulsory on new trucks in Europe. The efficiency of these systems has been proved by different studies but it has also been shown that they could be even more efficient if their energy absorption could be increased for instance by increasing the deformation length. The purpose of this thesis work was therefore to quantify the possible crash severity reduction, mainly for the car occupants, from an additional truck frontal structure in case of frontal crash between cars and trucks and to make recommendations on a new front structure of heavy trucks that can have an injury reducing potential for car occupants. In this study the length, the stiffness and the basic design of this new truck front structure have been investigated. The study has been made mainly using Finite Element simulations but also using analytical calculations. The results confirm that the use of a longer energy absorbing structure in front of the truck would decrease the crash severity for the car occupants while experiencing a frontal crash with a truck. The critical impact speeds are increased since the new truck structure is absorbing much more energy than current Front Underrun Protection Systems. Because of the new frontal structure load distribution, the forces that need to be carried by the truck front structure are also lowered.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
Teknisk mekanik , Transport , Applied Mechanics , Transport