ROLLOVER CRASHWORTHINESS OF A MULTIPURPOSE COACH

Bus rollover is one of the most serious types of accident as compared to other modes of bus accidents. In the European countries, the certification of sufficient deformation strength when overturning is compulsory for the approval of a coach according to the ECE 66-02 regulation. The certification is granted after positive results from computer simulations with full bus structure. The simulation specifies either overturning of the vehicle structure from tilting platform or the impact of a plate on the coach structure as it would correspond to the crash of the structure when falling onto the ground. In this paper, the rollover analysis of the coach structure was performed nonlinear explicit dynamic FEM code RADIOSS software as a solver. FEA model of the rollover analysis was generated with HyperMesh and HyperCrash preprocessor softwares. According to the ECE 66-02 regulation, a passenger’s survival space is defined in the coach model to check whether there is any intrusion into the survival space during the rollover. This ensures that the coach structure has sufficient strength to avoid intrusions into the survival space. The effect of passenger and luggage weights on energy absorbed by the coach structure during rollover is also discussed.