Citation

Atahan AO. Heavy Vehicle Syst. 2003; 10(4): 321-343.

Affiliation

Civil Engineering Department, Mustafa Kemal University, Seinyol, Hatay 31040, Turkey.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Inderscience Publishers)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Recent passenger car-heavy vehicle rear-end crashes demonstrate the importance of rear underride guard designs for heavy vehicle applications. Currently specified rear underride guards have many shortcomings, such as structural strength and energy dissipation capacity, clearance from ground, and other design aspects. As a result of these inadequacies in underride-guard design, many lives are lost every year when passenger cars slide underneath heavier vehicles. In this study, design modifications to an underride guard that minimally complies with the requirements contained in FMVSS 223/224 are evaluated. A previously performed crash test on the guard using a compact passenger car demonstrated the potential for excessive vehicle underride and passenger compartment intrusion problems. After the full-scale crash test, a detailed finite-element study is performed to investigate the shortcomings of the design. The accuracy of the underride guard model is partially validated using both a quasi-static and a full-scale crash test. After the validation, the guard is modified to improve its structural behaviour and energy-dissipation capacity. Four crash-test simulations are performed on the modified guard model to verify its effectiveness in energy dissipation and preventing intrusion into the passenger compartment. In these simulations, two vehicle speeds of 48 km/h and 56 km/h and two impact positions of 0% and 50% offsets are used to fully verify the acceptability of the modified guard model. Simulation results show that the modified rear underride guard performs much better than the original design. The guard dissipated a significant amount of the impacting vehicle's energy and showed no potential for passenger-compartment intrusion in any simulation. The deceleration of the vehicle was also within acceptable limits. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the improved guard performed well and the implementation of this particular underride guard on heavy vehicles looks promising.