A Laboratory Approach to Automobile Crash Experiments

In this study an investigation is made into the crash phase of automobile intersection collisions. Analytical as well as experimental methods were used to show that the automobile crash phenomena may be explained macroscopically by rigid body impact theory. Analysis of experimental results indicated the numerical range of the coefficient of friction between the colliding vehicles and the coefficient of restitution necessary to explain the crushing characteristics of the automobile structures and the final velocities at the end of the crash phase for different modes of intersection collisions.