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The introduction of the new NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) oblique test configuration presents a new and critical load case that manufacturers are on the way to solving. Towards providing the best tools for passive safety development, this paper presents the work carried out to enable the analysis of the loads transmitted to the barrier in this kind of test. These data enable the identification of the elements of the vehicle that take part in the absorption of energy during the crash and are a valuable tool to improving the safety of vehicles by comparing the loads transmitted to the barrier in oblique tests. To record these data, a load cell wall system located between the deformable barrier and the trolley was installed. To assess the barrier design, one oblique test with the RMDB barrier was carried out. The deformable barrier for the oblique test is instrumented with 9 columns of 3 and 4 load cells with a total of 32 x-axial load cells.

The ASSESS project is a European Commission co-funded project that aimed to develop harmonized and standardized assessment procedures for collision mitigation and avoidance systems. ASSESS was one of the first European projects which dealt in depth with the concept of integrated safety, defining methodologies to analyse vehicle safety from a global point of view. As such, the developed procedures included driver behaviour evaluation, pre-crash and crash system performance evaluation and socio-economic assessment. The activities performed for the crash evaluation focussed on the influence of braking manoeuvres in occupant positioning through dynamic braking manoeuvres with real occupants and Madymo and LS-Dyna simulations. The assessment of the passive safety protection level according to the results of the influence of the active systems is based on sled testing and full vehicle testing.