Frontal collision analysis of City Car

This experiment tests the proposed crash system of the CityCar. The car is to fold during the crash to help decrease the impact force experienced by the passengers. The experiment was conducted by running a simulation of the car crashing into a wall compared to that of a rigid car with no folding, and by building a one-fifth scale wooden model of the CityCar, running it into a wall, and measuring the force upon impact. The simulation was ran at 20 mph, 50 mph, and 80 mph, with weight ratios between the front and back of the car respectively of 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, 2:1, and 3:1, as well as three variations in the damping of the folding process. Both experiments show that the folding car experienced lower forces than the rigid car. The variations done in the simulation suggest that a back heavy car with considerable damping is best, but these results were a bit inconsistent and unclear and, therefore, will be tested more completely in the future. Results suggest that folding during a crash provides significant help, but this experiment only provides preliminary feedback useful for future analysis of the CityCar.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Authors dc:creator

• Neal, Terance (Terance K.)
• Hill, David

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• William J Mitchell.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/63031

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/63031