The purpose of this study is to examine compatibility test
procedures proposed in the IHRA Vehicle Compatibility Working
Group. Various crash tests were conducted with different vehicle
weights and stiffness in our previous study, and each of the
compatibility problems, namely mass; stiffness and geometric
incompatibility were identified in these tests. In order to improve
the compatibility, it is necessary to evaluate and control relevant
vehicle characteristics of compatibility in test procedures.
According to the IHRA study, relevant aspects for compatibility
in frontal impact are: Good structural interaction; Frontal
stiffness matching; Maintaining passenger compartment integrity;
Control the deceleration time histories of impacting cars.
Possible candidate test procedures to evaluate four items given
above are as follows:
1) A full-width Load Cell Barrier test in which the load cell
data was analyzed to evaluate structural interaction of vehicles,
and some geometric indices such as Average Height Of Force,
interaction area, and stiffness indices were measured. It was found
from the analysis that several candidate metrics could be
identified given their high correlation with laboratory
vehicle-to-vehicle crash tests.
2) An MDB-to-vehicle test, which allows the mass ratio to be
taken directly into account. Potentially it can generate a
realistic delta V and vehicle acceleration pulse. It has been
recognized that the MDB could be used as a representative of an
actual vehicle, and it provides more flexibility in compatibility
test procedures. MDB-to-vehicle tests were conducted to confirm the
reproducibility of vehicle-to-vehicle tests; the test results and
analysis are reported in this paper.