This paper provides an overview of a vehicle property database that can be accessed directly by the HVE Vehicle Editor. Vehicles are selected from the database according to their type (Passenger Car, Pickup Truck, etc.), year, make, model, body style, engine size and trim package. Each vehicle, when selected from the database, is predefined by its exterior dimensions, wheel locations, CG location, vehicle mass, inertial properties, drive train properties, suspension properties, tire properties and crush stiffness coefficients (A, B, & KV). A selected vehicle then may be exported into a ‘physics package’ (EDCRASH, EDSMAC, etc.) for use in a reconstruction or simulation.
This paper also provides an overview of how the vehicle property database was created. The sources of the data used to define each of the vehicles are specified in the paper. Obtaining a complete data set for a vehicle often was not possible. Analysis was performed on the available data to determine trends in vehicle properties. These trends were then used to estimate vehicle properties that were not available. The results of the analysis are included in this paper.