Door latch strength in a car body environment.

This paper defines the state of the industry with regard to vehicle door latch strength using a simple testing method that produces door latch separations more consistent with common intersection side impact collisions. The test methodology simultaneously applies both longitudinal and lateral loads as the vector sum of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 206 defined loads. Results are normalized using the existing 206 requirements to place the test findings in perspective. (A)