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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has developed moving deformable barriers for vehicle crash test procedures to assess vehicle and occupant response in partial overlap vehicle crashes. For this paper, based on the NHTSA Oblique Test procedure, a mid-size sedan was tested. The intent of this research was to provide insight into possible design changes to enhance the oblique collision performance of vehicles. The test results predicted high injury risk for BrIC, chest deflection, and the lower extremities. In this particular study, reducing lower extremity injuries has been focused on. Traditionally, lower extremity injuries have been reduced by limiting the intrusion of the lower region of the cabin's toe-board. In this study, it is assumed that increasing the energy absorbed within the engine compartment is more efficient than reinforcing the passenger compartment as a method to reduce lower extremity injuries.

To examine factors influencing side impact compatibility, as a first step, car-to-car tests were conducted to investigate the effect of sill interaction. As a result, it was found that sill interaction had a less significant effect on side impact performance than reducing the load aligned with the dummy. In addition, a series of Mobile Deformable Barrier (MDB) tests were performed to corroborate the conclusions of the car-to-car tests. Comparison of the results of these MDB tests showed that the effect of reducing loading aligned with the driver dummy is more significant than that of engagement with the target car's sill, which is consistent with the car-to-car test results.

This paper investigates test procedures for vehicle frontal crash compatibility. Both Full Width Deformable Barrier (FWDB) tests and Moving Deformable Barrier (MDB) tests were studied to assess relevant factors of compatibility issues. The FWDB test with load cells was examined to evaluate the stiffness and interaction areas of vehicles (sometimes referred to as the “aggressivity” of vehicles). Compatibility metrics were computed using barrier load cell data and the output from the FWDB test was compared with that from the Full Width Rigid Barrier (FWRB) test. Since the results obtained from these two full width tests were considerably different, a full frontal vehicle-to-vehicle test was carried out to identify structural deformation modes. The results indicated that similar deformation modes were observed between the vehicle-to-vehicle test and the FWDB test.