Abstract
The strength of coach body upper structure is one of the most important characters of coach safty. In this paper, a monocoque body structure is developed based on one highway coach, whose upper body structure can meet the ECE R66.01 standards. In order to improve the safety of coach rollover, the nonlinear properties of coach material and plastic hinge are considered and studied. The coach rollover FE model is built with beam elements and some plastic hinges through ABAQUS software, and then a complete coach rollover simulation is carried out. At last, a real vehicle rollover test is carried out to validate that the upper structure met requirements of ECE R66.01. Results obtained in the simulation show a high correlation degree with the experimental measurements.
KEYWORDS – Highway coach , Rollover, ECER66, Safety