IMPROVEMENT DESIGN FOR ROLLOVER ACCIDENTS INVOLVING LARGE PASSENGER VEHICLES

摘要

Public transportation provides a crucial solution to economic, energy, and environmental challenges. Large passenger vehicles in public transportation, however, often cause more serious accidents than passenger cars. It is therefore critical to improve both the designs of large passenger vehicles and road safety facilities. This work develops a design methodology to minimize the accident damage of large passenger vehicle rollover against guardrails. The design improvement is based on the finite element analysis (FEA) that reconstructs the common accident - bus rollover against guardrail on the road side. For the vehicle design, the FEA simulation reveals that strengthening side window pillars is effective, and the side window pillars are therefore improved by selecting proper parameters of material and thickness. The study also shows that the design of guardrail could be improved with an optimal size through uniform design (a methodology of Design of Experiments). The research results not only benefit the design improvement of large passenger vehicles and guardrails, but also provide useful information to the policy makers of safety regulations.