Abstract
Component testing is an economic powerful tool to determine the dynamic behaviour of structures and structural parts involved in impacts with the human body. Appropriate integration of component tests into the design process allows to reduce considerably the very high costs resulting from experimental verification of the dynamical behaviour of vehicle parts with full scale tests at crash test facilities. Within the techniques used for component impact testing the pendulum based devices offer strong advantages in some important aspects.
Mathematical simulation is today a very important tool in the design process and requires verification by experiments. Component tests allow to investigate well defined configurations appropriate to validate mathematical modeling of the impact process.
With pendulum based devices the required data to characterize the material behaviour in mathematical simulations of deformations during impact can be obtained with a testing procedure that corresponds well to the strain history of the impacted material during real collisions of bodies and body parts with structures.
This paper describes the use of two pendulum test facilities during the design process of crashworthy structural parts and of appropriate padding.