Vehicle Compatibility - Analysis of the Factors Influencing Side Impact Occupant Injury

This paper discusses a study conducted by GM to better understand the factors that influence injury potential in vehicle-to-vehicle side impacts. A number of other studies have been done which focus primarily on frontal vehicle-to-vehicle compatibility. GM focused on side impact compatibility in this study due to the risk of harm generally associated with this type of crash. Real world field performance was studied through an extensive six-state field analysis of recent model year (‘94+) vehicles. Of particular interest in this study was an efficacy analysis of the MVSS 214 dynamic side impact standard, which was phased-in starting with some 1994 model year passenger cars. Physical side impact crash testing of a 1997 passenger car was used to investigate the relationship of impacting mass, speed, geometric profile and stiffness on side impact intrusion and occupant injury. Included in this test series was an assessment of the injury response differences between the SID and BioSID anthropomorphic test device. To further investigate the factors influencing side impact injury, computer simulation was used to investigate how changes in impacting vehicle speed, mass, height, angle, overlap, plan view curvature and width effect occupant injury and intrusion.