Yet Another Look At Crash Pulse Analysis

The effect of vehicle acceleration history on dummy loading in the frontal impact NCAP event is explored with help of a one-dimensional mathematical model. Both numerical and analytical approaches are used to identify the ideal vehicle pulse. The numerical solution reveals limitations of square wave pulse. The analytical approach results in explicit formulation of the ideal pulse. Response of the mathematical model used in this paper is statistically correlated to a number of randomly selected NCAP frontal tests. Both the baseline model and the resulting optimized pulse are also confirmed using a validated three-dimensional Madymo model. Based on the analytical results, a simple measure of quality of the vehicle acceleration history is formulated.