MATURATION AND TRANSITION OF ENERGY ABSORBING DAMPERS

Southwest Research Institute^® (SwRI^®), under contract to US Army CCDC-GVSC, went through an extensive design, analysis, manufacturing, and testing project for the development of energy absorbing dampers and lightweight floor systems to provide protection to the warfighter inside vehicles that are exposed to underbelly blasts or similar threats. The dampers have been designed to remain locked during a wide variety of road vibration and shock loads, but to release and absorb energy through elongation, providing protection to occupants when the blast threats are encountered. This range of input criteria was challenging to satisfy in a passive system that is lightweight, relatively inexpensive, easy to install, and effective over a wide range of blast loads and occupant weights (5% through 95%). The SwRI work concentrated on designing two subsystem sizes – the individual dampers themselves in component tests, and ½ scale coupon level tests that include the dampers, floor systems, and attachment hardware. Working directly with SwRI, CCDC-GVSC integrated component level damper designs into full vehicle scale test articles. Full-scale vibration and durability testing was conducted at CCDC-GVSC’s PS&T facilities on their MEVT test fixture and subsequent live fire blast testing. These test programs and the results achieved are described in the paper.

Citation: J. Mathis, M. Grimm, S. Mullin, V. Burguess “Maturation and Transition of Energy Absorbing Dampers”, In Proceedings of the Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium (GVSETS), NDIA, Novi, MI, Aug. 13-15, 2019.