Design and Crashworthiness Analysis of Rear Underrun Protection Device

Abstract

Each year, thousands of people are passed away due to car accidents. Although technological improvements provided for passenger safety day by day, collision be-tween passenger car and heavy vehicles are still the most dangerous issue. In this pa-per, a new rear underrun protection device was designed. Three different support bracket thicknesses that vary with 4-6 mm whereas investigated and their crash performance and structural integrity were compared to each other. RUPD finite element models were created and analysed for Dodge Neon (1996) collided at 63 km/h vehicle impact speed under full overlap crash scenario. Abaqus/Explicit dynamic analysis that is special tool for highly non-linear Dynamics phenomenon was used for the analyses. Axial deformations, plastic strains, and axial displacement of right seat accelerometer were obtained and compared to evaluating of each design. The optimum support bracket thickness was determined for the new developed RUPD against vehicle colli-sion. The results were also compared to the ref[13] and it is seen that they were good agreement.