Citation

Huang J, Xia Y, Nie B, Zhou Q. Int. J. Veh. Des. 2012; 60(1/2): 20-38.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Inderscience Publishers)

DOI

10.1504/IJVD.2012.049156

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

For either the pedestrian's head or lower limb protection, Energy-Absorption (EA) space needs to be estimated for designing pedestrian-friendly front-end structures in the early stage of new vehicle development. However, existing methods in literature so far to estimate EA space for pedestrian lower-limb protection look over-simplified. This paper proposes a more reasonable equation to estimate EA space based on a Finite Element (FE) analysis. The energy-related parameters in the EA estimate equation were statistically determined with a parametric study. The detailed process of the legform-to-bumper impact test was also analysed, which may provide more insights into engineering design.


Keywords: pedestrian protection; legform impactor; energy absorption space; front-end design; energy transformation; free-free beams; vehicle front-end structures; leg protection; vehicle safety; vehicle design; finite element analysis; FEA; impact testing; bumper impact.