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Development of an 1100C Crushable Nose Surrogate Vehicle for Low-Speed Impact Testing of Breakaway Hardware

2016; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 2588; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3141/2588-14

2169-4052

Matías Groetaers, Gary R. Consolazio, David J. Wagner,

Structural Integrity and Reliability Analysis

In the development of breakaway roadside safety hardware, surrogate vehicles offer an efficient, cost-effective means of testing new breakaway design concepts and evaluating system performance in accordance with applicable standards. For the purposes of conducting low-speed impact testing, a crushable nose impactor, when combined with a gravity pendulum, can constitute a suitable surrogate alternative to a production vehicle. This paper describes the development of a crushable nose impactor that can serve as a surrogate version of the 1100C passenger car described in AASHTO’s Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware. The design of the new crushable nose was based on published force–deformation data collected from crash testing of a Kia Rio production passenger car. The new crushable nose differs from other designs in that it is intended specifically for use in low-speed impact testing of breakaway hardware; the nose uses tapered (i.e., trapezoidal) aluminum honeycomb cartridges, which permits improved approximation of the production vehicle force–deformation curve; and the cartridge design process incorporates insights gained through high-deformation compression testing of aluminum honeycomb materials. This paper documents ( a) the analysis techniques that were used iteratively to design the new crushable nose and ( b) the final dimensions of the configured cartridges. The results from rigid pole validation impact testing of the crushable nose impactor, conducted with the Florida Department of Transportation’s gravity pendulum, are presented and shown to be in good agreement with the production vehicle force–deformation data.