Effects of Restitution in the Application of Crush Coefficients

Effects of restitution on damage interpretations are compounded by the fact that restitution acts to reduce the amount of residual deformation, for a given maximum dynamic crush, while also acting to increase the total impact speed change. This paper presents a revised analytical procedure to include restitution effects for the CRASH program and refinements to the restitution modeling within the SMAC program. The conversion of vehicle impact test results into inputs for the two revised programs is also included. The effects of the refinements to the damage analysis procedures on reconstruction results are illustrated by direct comparisons with corresponding results produced by the original SMAC and CRASH programs and with measured data from full scale vehicle impact tests.