Abstract
Incompatibility between two colliding cars is becoming an important issue in passive safety engineering. Indicating signs of incompatibility, “over-riding and under-riding” and “forking” are likely caused by geometrical incompatibility in vertical and horizontal directions. The issue is, therefore, not only.a problem for partner-protection but also a possible disadvantage in self-protection. One of the possible solutions of this dual contradictory problem is to have a good structural interaction between the front-ends of two cars. In this study, it was hypothesized that homobeneous front-end could be a possible better solution for good structural interaction. Stress distribution at the front-end surface can be taken as possible indicators to quantitatively evaluate homogeneity. A multiple load-cell berrier enables to analyze stress distribution by measuring force through crash tests. In addition to digitizing stress distribution on the load-cell surface, statistical techniques can be used to quantify the deviation. Both simulation and experiment were conducted on actual front-end frame structure to examine the validity of the hypothesis and the capability of the proposed indicators. Finite element results (RADIOSS-CRASH) match with experimental result. Effect of curvature in dispersion of loads was also studied.
