A vehicle model for crash stage simulation

Simulation of vehicle impact stages is gaining more importance as the years go by. The reasons are an increase in the requested vehicles performances in terms of passive and active safety but also the necessity to investigate causes which lead to car accidents. The paper describes a special purpose 2D vehicle model for time-efficient crash stage simulation and therefore introduces the equations which rule over the model first. The Finite Element Method (FEM) represents the basis for the analytical formulation of the problem. However, the different stiffness of the various vehicle areas involves a calibration of the model, using real vehicle-to-barrier crash tests as a reference (carried out by EuroNCAP, NHTSA, etc.). Based on the obtained stiffness value, performed simulations demonstrate the applicability of the method to real vehicle-to-vehicle impacts contained in databases like AREC, VERSUE, etc. Furthermore, realworld crashes and results of the developed model simulations are compared for four different exemplary cases, highlighting the possibility to fully describe the events dynamics and the vehicles deformations. Therefore, the described model simulation times are evidently shortened in respect to more complicated solution approaches, like FEM or Multi-Body. These resources savings also imply the possibility to simulate activation of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS), i.e. the simulation of multiple impact configurations as the ADAS features vary.