The passive safety of passenger cars in frontal collisions is usually assessed by means of crash tests against a flat or angled rigid barrier. With respect to the frequency of asymmetrical frontal impacts in real world accidents, the most important crash test at Mercedes-Benz is an offset test with 40% overlap at 55 km/h against the rigid barrier. The rigid barrier should be replaced by a deformable barrier to further increase the proximity to road accidents of this offset crash. It should simulate the yielding structure involved in a car-to-car crash but at the same time with better efficiency and higher reproducibility. Based on extensive research Mercedes-Benz has defined such a realistic test. Since the deformable realistic test. Since the deformable element according to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 214 is well known and validated, it was chosen for this purpose. The force/deflection characteristics of the Honeycomb element represent the stiffness of the front end of a medium to large car. First results show that the vehicle deformation patterns are very similar to those found in real-world accidents. Another, also very important result is that the degree of overlap does not significantly influence the load on the occupants, in contrast to the tests against a rigid offset barrier. (A)
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