A Study of Compatibility Test Procedure in Frontal Impact 2003-06-0168

The purpose of this study is to examine compatibility test procedures proposed in the IHRA Vehicle Compatibility Working Group. Various crash tests were conducted with different vehicle weights and stiffness in our previous study, and each of the compatibility problems, namely mass; stiffness and geometric incompatibility were identified in these tests. In order to improve the compatibility, it is necessary to evaluate and control relevant vehicle characteristics of compatibility in test procedures.

According to the IHRA study, relevant aspects for compatibility in frontal impact are: Good structural interaction; Frontal stiffness matching; Maintaining passenger compartment integrity; Control the deceleration time histories of impacting cars.

Possible candidate test procedures to evaluate four items given above are as follows:

1) A full-width Load Cell Barrier test in which the load cell data was analyzed to evaluate structural interaction of vehicles, and some geometric indices such as Average Height Of Force, interaction area, and stiffness indices were measured. It was found from the analysis that several candidate metrics could be identified given their high correlation with laboratory vehicle-to-vehicle crash tests.

2) An MDB-to-vehicle test, which allows the mass ratio to be taken directly into account. Potentially it can generate a realistic delta V and vehicle acceleration pulse. It has been recognized that the MDB could be used as a representative of an actual vehicle, and it provides more flexibility in compatibility test procedures. MDB-to-vehicle tests were conducted to confirm the reproducibility of vehicle-to-vehicle tests; the test results and analysis are reported in this paper.