In order to develop a new vehicle, various specifications for both legal and insurance-related regulations must be considered for passive safety. These considerations are sometimes somewhat conflicting when applied to the total vehicle design. The optimisation of the front structure for one specification may lead to a safety decrease with certain other specifications. The consequence of this is that the front structure merely represents a compromise between varying specifications. The front structure can be adapted to the individual loading cases and requirements by use of adaptive structural components, in order to improve the passive safety of the vehicle in combination with the restraint system. The basis of this lecture is a study carried out by Siemens Restraint Systems GmbH in co-operation with Benteler Automobiltechnik, ZF-Boge, Munich Technical University. Volkswagen provides us with in production longitudinal structural members. In this study, various concepts for adaptive vehicle structures were designed and built as prototype concepts, in order to assess the effect of the various components in dynamic testing. These adaptive structural components were built up as a frontal system, together with the longitudinal structural members and crossmembers and integrated onto a test trolley. During the test activities the deformation, force and decelerations were measured for later analysis. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126782.
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