How to Use PC-CRASH to Simulate Rollover Crashes

Due to the increasing number of minivans and sport utility vehicles, rollovers have become more significant. As a result, various accident reconstruction programs have been developed to address this issue.

To reconstruct rollover crashes, various requirements have to be fulfilled. These consist of:

• providing a simple method that is able to model three dimensional environments that often play a major role in rollovers.
• including suspension, tire and collision models must be provided. This is particularily important in the rollover initiation phase.
• including proper vehicle geometry and contact stiffness must be available. These are important for simulation of body contacts that affect the vehicle motion.

This study focuses on one program, PC-CRASH. This program was developed to allow simulations of vehicle 3-dimensional movements before, during and after the impact. The study also discusses the physical background of the models, their capabilities as well as their limitations. One rollover example is provided, The model was validated using crash test data.