Development of Fender Attachment with Collapsible Brackets for Pedestrian Head Impact

In order to reduce the injuries during the vehicle- pedestrian collisions some alternatives for energy absorption have been applied. On average 27% of the head impacts occur on the hood and fenders and generally a great part of these are fatal injuries. For this reason some alternatives to hood development have been applied to reduce the injuries.

Depends on Vehicle Style the impact could occur straight on the fenders, so for this cases we need to provide enough free deformation space between fender catwalk and upper rail to absorb the kinetic energy from Head impact because is physically necessary the deformation of the external surface for the other internal components to reduce the HPC values.

Most of Automotive Manufactures has been applied the deformable brackets between fender and rail with purpose to deform during the head impact and absorb the kinetic energy.

This paper presents a comparative analysis for alternatives to optimize the catwalk geometries, deformable brackets geometries and thickness to reduce the HPC, for inlaid hood concepts.