Citation

Daily J, Daily J, Rich A. Accid. Reconstr. J. 2009; 19(5): 41-50.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Accident Reconstruction Journal)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article describes a new method that can be used to calculate the impact speed of a vehicle with a wooden utility pole. An accurate method to calculate impact speeds is important to traffic crash reconstruction. The proposed method accounts for pole movement in the ground. The authors evaluate four energy dissipation mechanisms: vehicle crush, pole fracture, pole translation/rotation, and post-impact vehicle movement. The study included three full-scale crash tests. Results from these tests showed that the energy-based solution model computed the impact speed of the tests vehicles into the test poles very accurately. The precision of the result is between 8% and 15% with most of the variation arising from the A and B stiffness coefficients. Detailed sensitivity analysis formulae are presented in an appendix.