Crashworthiness engineering of automobiles and aircraft - Progress and promise

Abstract

This paper reviews progress made in improving the technological resources of crashworthine ss engineering: physical testing developments, analytical simulation techniques, and inventions and design tools. It defines some of the unresolved problems associated with development of design tools by discussing modeling of structures and exteriors. It concludes that physical test technology is well advanced for highway vehicles, and that available mathematical models, principally for structures and bioengineering, are of limited value because of inadequate work in assuring numerical modeling fidelity and strengthening test-analysis correlation, and that significant improvements in crashworthiness of in-use vehicles awaits more design tools. I. Introduction C RASHWORTHINESS engineering is designing to minimize injuries in vehicle impact. To an automotive engineer, this involves design of a range of features from the bumpers (so negligible car damage occurs at low speeds) to restraints (so the passenger will survive high-speed impact). For the aircraft designer, this involves design of the landing gear for repeated shock absorption at low impact velocity to design of ejection seats to save the pilot from high-speed impacts.