Compatibility between passenger vehicles and road barriers during oblique collisions

In the European and US testing procedures for road barriers, vehicles are specified for the tests essentially by their mass properties. However, vehicles with similar mass can behave quite differently during a crash event. For the specific crash situation with the roadside restraint systems, e.g. W-beam guardrail, cable barriers, etc., the vehicle structure has to be compatible with the road restraint systems in geometry and crash stiffness to ensure safe operation during the interactions of vehicles and road barriers. The goal of this paper is to make a parametric investigation for the geometric compatibility between the compact passenger vehicles and the road barriers. The Finite Element model Ford Festiva and a weak-post W-beam guardrail were used for analyzing the oblique impact situation with a high impact speed and a small angle. For this specific situation the dynamic responses of the vehicle and the guardrail during impacts were investigated to study their structural interactions. The simulation results of the modified vehicle model and guardrail model were reasonable in comparison with the crash test data under the similar impact conditions.