Abstract
Keywords - Crashworthiness, full frontal impact, vehicle safety, smart structure, and analytical analysis
Abstract - The paramount aim of this paper is to investigate and to enhance crashworthiness in full frontal impact. An extendable energy absorber system is proposed as a new direction of crashworthiness improvement to support the function of the existing vehicle structure. The proposed front-end structure consists of two controlled hydraulic cylinders integrated with the front-end longitudinal members. The work carried out in this paper includes developing and analyzing mathematical models of vehicle -to- vehicle and vehicle -to- barrier in full frontal impact using an additional energy absorber (smart structure). Two mathematical models are introduced and closed form solutions are obtained. It is proven from analytical analysis that the smart structures bring significantly lower intrusions and decelerations. In addition, it is shown that the mathematical models are valid, convenient, and can be used in an effective way to give a quick insight of real life crashes.