A substantial amount of research has been conducted at Volvo during the last ten years in order to understand the mechanisms behind injuries in side impacts and to be able to introduce effective countermeasures in our cars. Different technical solutions used to upgrade the occupant protection of passenger cars in car-to-car side impacts are presented. Specific features were built into a conventional uni-bodied passenger car and as a second step, engineering principles of a Side Impact Protection System were integrated into a prototype vehicle. The rationale behind these changes is described. In a recently developed methodolgy, data from Volvo's Traffic Accident Research Team was analysed with statistical methods in order to set requirement targets for the product development. The method makes it possible to infer expected injury reduction in real accidents from dummy measurements in laboratory tests. The concept cars were evaluated in tests with a moving deformable barrier. The SID-dummy was used as the anthropomorphic measuring device. The results show that a reduction of measured injury criteria can be achieved by introducing body side structures with optimized energy absorbing characteristics in car-to-car impacts. With a tuning of the mechanical properties of the door, where occupant contact may occur, the results can be improved even further. (A) For the covering abstract of the conference, see IRRD 837684.
Abstract