Technical Paper
Stiffness Parameters for Vehicle Collision Analysis, an Update
2001-03-05
2001-01-0502
At the 1991 SAE Congress, a paper entitled “Stiffness Parameters for Vehicle Collision Analysis” was published. The section that attracted the most interest dealt with various methods to relate the CRASH stiffness parameters (A and B) to the SMAC stiffness parameter (KV). The discussion immediately following the paper presentation revealed one more method (developed by Fonda) to relate the CRASH and SMAC parameters consistently with regards to crash energy. These last ten years there have been three significant developments concerning a consistent CRASH-SMAC conversion. Firstly, a greater range of software providers has developed more variations of each basic computer program. Secondly, the CRASH algorithm has been extended so that it treats rebound more like the old SMAC. And thirdly, two completely different versions of SMAC have been released which provide for a bilinear force-displacement curve like the old CRASH.