Development of Pole Side Impact Sled Test Method using Multiple Actuators for EuroNCAP

The pole side impact test has been mandatory in Euro NCAP since 2009 and it includes, in addition to the head, assessments on other critical body regions that might be affected such as the chest, abdomen and pelvis. This paper describes a new test method for predicting Anthropomorphic Test Device responses to calculate injury index in side impact tests of a rigid pole under Euro NCAP conditions. Simplified sled tests are very effective in reducing the cost and time of development of more advanced side impact safety devices. To accomplish sled tests successfully, it is necessary to reconstruct accurately the combined dynamic deformation behavior of door and seat in pole impact. That behavior varies among different dummy response regions. Conventional sled test methods, published in previous literature, can reconstruct the deformation of the entire door using a single actuator at constant intrusion velocity but actual door velocity isn't constant in full scale vehicle crash tests. The above mentioned methods simulate the door deformation velocity using whole the door but in those cases the structure isn't simple and experiment cost is high. Hence, a new sled test method, using present Advanced Side Impact Simulator (ASIS), was developed by identifying the main features of door and seat intrusion behavior needed to accurately predict and simulate the dummy responses at different body regions in the vehicle tests. The features are reconstruction of inner door panel velocities as input corresponding to injury level at different body regions as output response by using multiple actuators for door and seat. This test method was validated with Euro NCAP pole side impact tests for a number of vehicles based on the results of ES-2 (50th percentile male) dummies injury criteria.