Simulation of Vehicle Lateral Side Impacts with Poles to Estimate Crush and Impact Speed Characteristics

Current techniques that can be used to evaluate and analyse lateral impact speeds of vehicle crashes with poles/trees are based on measuring the deformation crush and using lateral crash stiffness data to estimate the impact speed. However, in some cases the stiffness data is based on broad object side impacts rather than pole impacts. Some have argued that broad object side impact tests can be used for analysing narrow object impacts; however previous authors have identified the fallacy of this premise.

Publicly available side pole crash test data is evaluated in terms of crush depth impact speed and impact energy for six general vehicle types.

A range of simulated pole impact tests at various speeds and impact angles were conducted using LS-Dyna and PC-Crash. Publicly available Finite Element Vehicle models of a 1996 Ford Taurus, a 1994 Chevrolet C2500 and a 1997 Geo Metro (Suzuki Swift) were used, providing relationships among impact speeds, crush depths and impact angles.