A Study on the Application of Energy-dissipating Protection Device in Car-to-Truck Rear Underride

A passenger car is severely damaged in car-to-truck underride accident which threatens the lives in the passenger car seriously. The objective of the study is to develop an energy-dissipating rear underride protection device (RUPD) for diminishing the hazard imposed on the passenger car and the occupants. The new RUPD which has energy-dissipating structure is designed. It is modeled in virtual environment together with a moving barrier (MB) and a contrastive common RUPD. Finite element simulation is performed for comparative analysis on the performance of the two RUPDs in LS-DYNA. In the virtual test, the MB crashes into the two RUPDs respectively according to the national standard GB11567.2-2001. The conditions of 54km/h crash speed and offset collision form are added to the virtual test for further test. The results show that under the national standard condition, the new RUPD dissipates 77% of the total crash energy and the MB´s acceleration peak in the test of the new RUPD is 22.8g, which is 40% lower than that in the test of the common one. In the extension virtual tests, the new RUPD performs effectively in buffering, energy dissipating and underride protecting.