Five car-to-car full-scale vehicle impact tests were conducted in order to aid the development of testing protocols for the certification and rating of vehicles, with respect to their ability to protect occupants from soft tissue neck injures. A wide range of passenger cars (ranging from the Ford Ka to the Volvo S80) were chosen as the target cars. The Ford Focus, representing the mass of a typical average sized European car, was used as the bullet car. All the tests were 100% overlap rear impacts which aimed to achieve a change in velocity (or "delta V") of 16 km/h for the target vehicles. Due to the different ride heights of the target vehicles, the tests included over- and under-ride impacts as well as bumper-to-bumper impacts. The results showed significant differences with respect to signal shape and peak acceleration levels when compared with existing proposals. In particular, the crash pulses showed a bi-modal nature and had a high initial peak. These characteristics appear to be typical for current production passenger cars. The recorded crash pulses have been numerically combined into a proposed single pulse. Finally, a tolerance corridor for the sled acceleration signal and the sled delta V has been proposed. For the covering abstract see ITRD E121180.
Abstract