State of the Art on Basic Methodologies for Crashworthy Design of Automotive Body Components Considering Axial Collapse Mode

Abstract

The body structure of a passenger vehicle is one of the important functional groups of a vehicle. A crashworthy car body structure is so conceptualised as to absorb considerable amount of the impact energy by deforming in definite areas, and thereby reduce the deceleration experienced by its passengers to survivable levels. The non-deforming areas of the car body structure are designed as stiff survivable space for the passengers. Various criteria, such as deformation pattern, deceleration pulse of the vehicle, different bio-mechanical criteria defined for the passengers etc., can be used for assessing the crashworthiness of vehicles. Various methods have been developed and used over the years to analyse and optimise the crashworthiness of vehicles. This paper presents an overview of simplified design approaches for analysing car body components for their behaviour in crash events. This includes a brief summary of various collapse modes. Main characteristics of the axial collapse mode and simplified design approaches available for this mode, relevant for our research work, are also presented.