Requirements for optimized crashworthiness design of the longitudinal members

In recent years a large number of frontal crash tests have been reported which were designed specifically to represent real crash situations. In these tests many cars showed a crash behaviour leading to unacceptable deformations of the passenger compartment. Apparent reason for this is that insufficient design efforts were made to cope with the high and uneven mechanical loads occurring in these realistic collisions. Improved frontal crashworthiness of cars necessitates additional design requirements, which take into account that the majority of collisions occur with partial frontal overlap, at oblique impact angles, and at velocities that deviate significantly from the regulated test speeds. Such a set of design requirements has been formulated. Based upon a numerical simulation study, a concept is proposed for a longitudinal member capable of the desired crash response. (A) For the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD 894848.