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FMVSS 226 will become effective on September 1, 2013 with the purpose of mitigating occupant ejections through the vehicle side windows. In order to use deployable counter measures to mitigate ejection, vehicle rollover tests are needed to design deployment algorithms for rollover condtions. Vehicle manufacturers have to define their own test procedures, because FMVSS 226 does not define any rollover test methods. The soil trip rollover test is a vehicle rollover test method in which a vehicle is propelled into a soil pool to measure its rollover characteristics. Some of difficulties in soil trip rollover tests include proper maintenance of soil, for example, under fluctuating humidity and homogeneity of soil in the pool, so as to ensure stable repeatability of test results. Protection of onboard measurement equipment in a test vehicle from soil incursion when the vehicle rolls over can also be a challenge.

Rollover tests are performed to design the algorithms for deployment of countermeasures to mitigate occupant ejection in rollover situations. The ditch fall-over test is one of the rollover test methods in which a vehicle on a steep slope, representing a ditch embankment, is subjected to a forced steering operation that results in a turnover. An accurate prediction method is needed to determine the specifications of the ditch fall-over test equipment and test conditions because a test-based trial-and-error process involves high cost of performing repeated experiments and preperation for various types of related test equipment. This paper presents a newly developed numerical simulation method for simulating vehicle behavior in ditch fall-over tests.