Numerical and experimental investigation of a lightweight bonnet for pedestrian safety

Abstract

A topic of great consideration in current vehicle development in Europe is pedestrian protection. The enforcement of a new regulation trying to decrease the injuries to head, pelvis, and leg of pedestrian impacted by cars, is imposing great changes in vehicles' front design. In the present work a design solution for the bonnet, which is the main body part interacting with the human head during a car to pedestrian collision, is proposed. This solution meets the stiffness and safety targets, takes into account the manufacturing and recyclability requirements and gives a relevant contribution to vehicle lightweight. Thus this proposed solution puts in evidence that safety and lightweight are not incompatible targets. The amount of potential injury to the pedestrian head is evaluated, as prescribed by the standard test procedures, by means of a headform launched on the bonnet. However, the standard approach based on the head injury criterion (HIC) value only is reported to be largely unsatisfactory: therefore, a new experimental methodology for the measurement of the translational and the rotational accelerations has been developed, and the experimental results are reported. This would be a starting point for the evolution of currently adopted injury criteria to increase the safety of the vulnerable road users.

Keywords:

• pedestrian protection
• lightweight design
• tri-axial rotational acceleration
• head injuries evaluation

Acknowledgements

The financial support of the Piemonte Regional Government made this work possible, within the project ‘TREES – The 5 stars of sustainable mobility’, through grant No. RIJ08PA01, Regional Call for Industrial Research and Pre-competitive Development 2006, Area: ‘Sustainable Mobility’. This financial support is gratefully acknowledged. The authors wish also to acknowledge the contribution of Mrs. Katia Bianciotto and Mr. Antonio Casu of Italdesign-Giugiaro for the part related to numerical investigation.