• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• 제6권5호
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• pp.491-499
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• 2005

There are different types of vehicle impacts recorded every year, resulting in many injuries and fatalities. The severity of these impacts depends on the aggressivety and incompatibility of vehicle-to-roadside hardware impacts. The aim of this paper is to investigate and to enhance crashworthiness in the case of full barrier impact using a new idea of crash improvement. Two different types of smart structures have been proposed to support the function of the existing vehicle. The work carried out in this paper includes developing and analyzing mathematical models of vehicle-to-barrier impact for the two types of smart structures. It is proven from analytical analysis that the mathematical models can be used in an effective way to give a quick insight of real life crashes. Moreover, it is shown that these models are valid and flexible, and can be useful in optimization studies.

• 한국자동차공학회논문집
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• 제10권1호
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• pp.153-161
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• 2002

This paper develops a finite element model for crashworthiness analysis ova small-sized bus. The full vehicle finite element model is composed of 31,982 shell elements,599 beam elements,42 bar elements, and 34,204 nodes. The model uses four material models (such as elastic, elastic-plastic(steel), rigid. and elastic-plastic (rubber) material model) of PAM-CRASH. The model uses four contact types to define sliding interfaces in ten areas. A frontal crash test using an actual vehicle with 30mph velocity to a rigid barrier is carried out. Vehicle pulses at lower part of left and right b-pillar are measured, and deformed shapes of frame and driver seat's lower left area are photographed. A frontal crash simulation using the developed full vehicle finite element model is performed with PAM-CRASH installed in super computer SP2. The simulation is performed with the same conditions as the test. The measured vehicle pulses and photographed deformed shapes from the test are compared to ones from the simulation to validate the reliability of the developed model.

• 한국자동차공학회논문집
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.96-109
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• 1996

The airbag system is known to be extremely efficient for the protection in an automobile crash. The performance of the airbag system is evaluated by real tests. However, the test is very difficult and expensive. Therefore, the computational simulations are carried out with low cost. The airbag analysis is included in the anlysis of the full-car crashworthiness. The behavior of the airbag can be predicted by a thermodynamic analysis. The contact force between the occupant and the airbag is calculated from the contact volume and the pressure in the airbag. The injury rate is evaluated from the contact force and the acceleration of dummies. So far, the contact is defined after the airgag is fully inflated. In many cases, the occupant is seated in the out-of-position and the contact can happen during the inflation process. A new algorithm has been developed for the out-of-position. To describe the inflation process precisely, the airbag is defined by a sphere and a torus. The injury is evaluated for the contact happened at any time. The developed algorithm is coded and interfaced with an existing software in the public domain. The full-car modeling is adopted from the previous study which is tuned for the regular position and real tests. Numerical experimentation have been carried out with a couple of dummies in the out-of-position and the injury processes are analyzed.