Links To Poulter Lab Pages
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Crashworthiness |
Links To Other SRI Pages
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Poulter Laboratory has been engaged in studying the crash response of vehicles, occupant safety, and impacts on right-of-way structures since 1971. These studies include both scale model testing and finite element simulations. Scale model crash testing provides a cost saving alternative to full scale crash tests for many applications. These include development of new crashworthy vehicles where full scale prototypes are very expensive to fabricate and test. Other applications include rail transportation or aerospace vehicles where full scale tests are very expensive. An example of a scale model crash test to investigate a vehicle crash frame against a rigid pole impact is shown below in Figure 1.
Poulter Laboratory has four pneumatically driven vehicle launchers for scale-model crash testing. The launchers can accelerate models of various scales and produce a wide variety of impact conditions. These launchers use pressurized nitrogen to accelerate pistons and include a cable system to produce impacts between two moving vehicles. An example of a 90 degree car-to-car impact for scale model research safety vehicles (RSVs) is shown in Movie 1. The model vehicles are typically pushed by sleds that slide on a track beneath the road surface until they reach the impact speed. The sleds are then stopped and the model vehicles are released to coast freely until impact. The launch system is flexible to allow a wide variety of impact angles and speed ratios. Electronic signal conditioning and recording equipment and high-speed photographic and video equipment are available for use with all of the launchers.
Advances in numerical simulation techniques and computer capabilities have made crash simulations another important tool for investigating crash safety. Poulter Laboratory is actively involved in the model development and simulation of vehicles, occupants, and roadside hardware for a variety of crash applications. Vehicle crash models include both highway and rail cars. Occupant models include both the detailed modeling of anthropomorphic crash dummies used in vehicle crash testing and development of simpler models to simulate the occupant kinematics in collisions. Roadside hardware models can be developed for either analysis of the vehicle collision response or for development of improved crash safety of the right-of-way structures. More detailed descriptions of specific crash safety programs are given in the pages below.
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