STUDYING THE EFFECTS OF NON-EXTENDABLE HYDRAULIC ABSORBERS WITH CUBIC NONLINEAR CHARACTERISTICS ON THE VEHICLE DYNAMIC RESPONSE UNDER HIGH SPEED IMPACTS

摘要

In this paper, a new smart front-end structure is proposed to improve vehicle crashworthiness. It consists of two non-extendable hydraulic absorbers parallel to the longitudinal members. The work carried out in this paper includes developing and analyzing mathematical models of vehicle-to-vehicle frontal collision events. In these models, vehicle components are modeled by lumped masses and nonlinear springs. Moreover, the hydraulic absorbers are represented by nonlinear dampers elements. Cubic nonlinear form is used to define the characteristics of both nonlinear springs and dampers. In this paper, the dynamic responses of the crash events are obtained with the aid of an analytical approach using Incremental Harmonic Balance Method (IHBM). Moreover, the intrusion injury and occupant deceleration are used for interpreting the results. It is demonstrated from simulation results that significant improvements to both intrusion and deceleration injuries are obtained using the smart front-end structure. Furthermore, the crash severity has been significantly minimized.