Heavy vehicle cabs of the ‘cab-over’ type construction have very little structure in front of the driver which can be used to absorb energy during a frontal collision. As part of a project to develop a crashworthiness standard for Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGV) cabs [1], a phase of dynamic computer simulations was carried out. The simulations used Finite Element (FE) models analysed with the LS-Dyna3D software, and concentrated on ‘cabover’ type vehicles.
Typical accidents, involving frontal collisions, were reconstructed for potentially survivable truck to truck impacts. The residual space was defined by the geometry of a 95%ile dummy and it’s intrusion was recorded for each analysis.
Also using dynamic simulations a Type Approval-like test scenario was developed which was representative of the generic frontal impact accidents.
A summary of all the simulation results is presented by this paper.