INFLUENCE OF WHEELS ON FRONTAL CRASH RESPONSE OF SMALL LIGHTWEIGHT ELECTRIC VEHICLE

摘要

For vehicle frontal crash, the front wheels may affect impact load transfer and load path, and to some extent, the tire deformation may contribute to crash energy absorption. The effects would be especially prominent when it comes to the cases of micro car, offset crash and electric car. For a micro or small car, the front compartment space is small and the wheels are relatively large, and so the wheel's role on transferring impact load to the A-pillar and the rocker is more significant and the energy absorbed by the tire deformation contributes to a relatively large portion. Moreover, in the case of an offset or small overlap collision, the wheel impacted is apparently engaged at a deeper level than that in full frontal crash. For an electric car when its electric motor is positioned in the rear of the car, the front compartment does not have space-taking engine and so the structural deformation and space use are more affected by the wheels. In this paper, by finite element simulations using a small lightweight electric vehicle (SLEV) model, the above-mentioned aspects are studied. The model has no complex components, and therefore is suitable for parametric study. The influence of the front wheels on the impact load transfer and the energy absorbed by the tire deformation are analyzed. Also front crash results of SLEV are compared with Yaris to show how front wheels affect load path in crash. The results show that the influence of wheels on frontal crash response of small lightweight electric vehicles should not be ignored and should be an integral part of crash safety design.