Dynamic Safety Assessment Using Objective Test Methods - Latest Developments of Evalue Project 2010-36-0122

The dynamic safety concept comprises all the active safety vehicle characteristics supporting the driver in critical dynamic maneuvers. Dynamic safety is therefore a major active safety requirement with great potential for reducing road accidents throughout the world. It is the combination of not only active chassis systems (ESC, ABS...) but also passive chassis systems (tires, suspension...) which determines the overall dynamic safety performance of the vehicle.

This paper describes a set of test procedures which cover with only a few specific maneuvers the widest possible range of critical dynamic situations. Beyond a simple pass/fail result, these test procedures will be able to quantify and therefore compare the dynamic safety performance. These results could be used by the suitable organizations to define a rating system to thereby increase public awareness of the dynamic safety performance of vehicles on the market. During the development of the test procedures, state-of-the-art test instrumentation is considered in order to maximize test objectiveness and repeatability. Furthermore, special emphasis is given to normalize test results with the aim of avoiding track/grip dependency and adapting the assessment to the different vehicle types.

This paper summarizes the latest developments corresponding to the stability assistance domain of the European project eVALUE (Testing and Evaluation Methods of ICT-based Safety Systems, FP7 - ICT 1st call, grant agreement no. 215607). Its main focus is to define objective methods for the assessment of active safety performance.