Precision Measurement Technique of Loads and Displacements over an Automotive Body during Crash Testing

The application of a large Hopkinson bar bundle (bar transducers) as precision crash test technique of vehicle body cross-sections is proposed. This technique is under development at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission [1] and some successful results have already been obtained. The overall objective is to measure accurately the loads and the displacements in some defined critical points of a vehicle body subjected to a crash test in order to use such measurements as reference for the validation of Finite Element (FE) code predictions.