The
crumple zone is a structural feature mainly of
automobileAn automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
s. Crumple zones have also been incorporated into railcars in recent years.
They are designed to absorb the
energyIn physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
from the impact during an accident by controlled deformation. This energy is much higher than is commonly recognized. The severity of a collision with a pole or tree at 60 km/h is similar to driving over a 10 meter sheer drop and crashing onto a hard surface. Typically, crumple zones are located in the front part of the vehicle, in order to absorb the impact of a
head-on collisionA head-on collision is one where the front ends of two ships, trains, planes or vehicles hit each other, as opposed to a side collision or rear-end collision.-Rail transport:...
, though they may be found on other parts of the vehicle as well. According to a British Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre study of where on the vehicle impact damage occurs: 65% were front impacts, 25% rear impacts, 5% left side, and 5% right side. Some racing cars use aluminium or composite/carbon fiber honeycomb to form an
impact attenuatorAn impact attenuator, also known as a crash cushion or crash attenuator or cowboy cushions, is a device intended to reduce the damage done to structures, vehicles, and motorists resulting from a motor vehicle collision...
that dissipate crash energy using a much smaller volume and lower weight than road car crumple zones. Impact attenuators have also been introduced on highway maintenance vehicles in some countries.
An early example of the crumple zone concept was used by the
Mercedes-BenzMercedes-Benz is a German manufacturer of automobiles, buses, coaches, and trucks. Mercedes-Benz is a division of its parent company, Daimler AG...
engineer
Béla BarényiBéla Barényi was a Hungarian-Austrian engineer, regarded as the father of passive safety in automobiles. He was born in Hirtenberg near Vienna during the Austro-Hungarian Empire...
on the 1959
Mercedes-Benz "Fintail"The Mercedes-Benz W111 was a chassis code given to its top-range vehicles, including 4-door sedans, produced from 1959 to 1968, and 2-door coupes and cabriolets from 1961 to 1971. The W111, was initially attributed only to 6-cylinder cars with 2.2 litre engines. The luxury version with big-block 3...
. This innovation was first patented by Mercedes-Benz in the early 1950s. The patent 854157, granted in 1952, describes the decisive feature of passive safety. Barényi questioned the opinion prevailing till then, that a safe car had to be rigid. He divided the car body into three sections: the rigid non-deforming passenger compartment and the crumple zones in the front and the rear. They are designed to absorb the energy of an impact (kinetic energy) by deformation during collision.
On September 10, 2009, ABC News 'Good Morning America' and 'World News' showed a U.S. Insurance Institute of Highway Safety crash test of a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu in an offset head-on collision with a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air sedan. It dramatically demonstrated the effectiveness of modern car safety design, over 1950s design, particularly of rigid passenger safety cells and crumple zones.
Function
Crumple zones work by managing crash energy, absorbing it within the outer parts of the vehicle, rather than being directly transmitted to the occupants, while also preventing intrusion into or deformation of the passenger cabin. This better protects car occupants against injury. This is achieved by controlled weakening of sacrificial outer parts of the car, while strengthening and increasing the rigidity of the inner part of the body of the car, making the passenger cabin into a 'safety cell', by using more reinforcing beams and higher strength steels. Impact energy that does reach the 'safety cell', is spread over as wide an area as possible to reduce its deformation. Volvo introduced the side crumple zone, with the introduction of the SIPS (Side Impact Protection System) in the early 1990s.
When a vehicle and all its contents, including passengers and luggage are travelling at speed, they have
inertiaInertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest, or the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion. It is proportional to an object's mass. The principle of inertia is one of the fundamental principles of classical physics which are used to...
/
momentumIn classical mechanics, linear momentum or translational momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object...
, which means that they will 'want' to continue forward with that direction and speed (Newton's first law of motion). In the event of a sudden deceleration of a rigid framed vehicle due to impact, unrestrained vehicle contents will continue forwards at their previous speed due to inertia, and impact the vehicle interior, with a force equivalent to many times their normal weight due to gravity. The purpose of crumple zones is to slow down the collision and to absorb energy, to reduce the difference in speeds between the vehicle and its occupants.
Seatbelts restrain the passengers so they don't fly through the windshield, and are in the correct position for the airbag and also spread the loading of impact on the body. Seat belts also absorb passenger inertial energy by being designed to stretch during an impact, again to reduce the speed differential between the passenger's body and their vehicle interior. In short: A passenger whose body is decelerated more slowly due to the crumple zone (and other devices) over a longer time, survives much more often than a passenger whose body indirectly impacts a hard, undamaged metal car body which has come to a halt nearly instantaneously. It is like the difference between slamming someone into a wall headfirst (fracturing their skull) and shoulder-first (bruising their flesh slightly) is that the arm, being softer, has tens of times longer to slow its speed, yielding a little at a time, than the hard skull, which isn't in contact with the wall until it has to deal with extremely high pressures.
The final impact after a passenger's body hits the car interior, airbag or seat belts, is that of the internal organs hitting the ribcage or skull, due to their inertia. The force of this impact is the way through which many car crashes cause disabling or life threatening injury. Other ways are skeletal damage and blood loss. The sequence of energy dissipating and speed reducing technologies - crumple zone - seat belt - airbags - padded interior, are designed to work together as a system, to reduce the force of the impact on the outside of the passengers body and the final impact of organs inside the body.
A common misconception about crumple zones is that they reduce safety by allowing the vehicle's body to collapse, allowing the crushing of the vehicle occupants. In fact, crumple zones are typically located in front and behind of the main body (though side impact absorption systems are starting to be introduced), of the car (which forms a rigid 'safety cell'), compacting within the space of the engine compartment or boot/trunk. The marked improvement over the past two decades in high speed crash test results and real-life accidents also belies any such fears. Modern vehicles using what are commonly termed 'crumple zones', provide far superior protection for their occupants, in severe tests against other vehicles with crumple zones and solid static objects, than older models or SUVs, that use a separate chassis frame and have no crumple zones. They do tend to come off worse when involved in accidents with SUVs without crumple zones, because most of the energy of the impact is absorbed by the vehicle with the crumple zone. Another problem is 'impact incompatibility' where the 'hard points' of the end of chassis rails of SUVs are higher than the 'hard points' of cars causing the SUV to 'override' the engine compartment of the car. In order to tackle this problem recent Volvo SUV/off-roaders incorporate structures below the front bumper designed to engage lower height car crumple zones.
Computer Modelled Crash Simulation
In the early 1980s, using technology developed for the
aerospaceAerospace comprises the atmosphere of Earth and surrounding space. Typically the term is used to refer to the industry that researches, designs, manufactures, operates, and maintains vehicles moving through air and space...
and nuclear industries, German car makers started complex computer
crash simulationA crash simulation is a virtual recreation of a destructive crash test of a car or a highway guard rail system using a computer simulation in order to examine the level of safety of the car and its occupants. Crash simulations are used by automakers during Computer-Aided Engineering analysis for...
studies, using finite element methods simulating the crash behaviour of individual car body components, component assemblies, and quarter and half cars at the
body in white(BIW)Body in white or BIW refers to the stage in automotive design or automobile manufacturing in which a car body's sheet metal components have been welded together — but before moving parts the motor, chassis sub-assemblies, or trim have been added and before painting.The name...
stage. These experiments culminated in a joint project by the Forschungsgemeinschaft Automobil-Technik (FAT), a conglomeration of all seven German car makers (Audi, BMW, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Opel (GM), Porsche, and Volkswagen), which tested the applicability of two emerging commercial crash simulation codes. These simulation codes recreated a frontal impact of a full passenger car structure (Haug 1986) and they ran to completion on a computer overnight. Now that turn-around time between two consecutive job-submissions (computer runs) did not exceed one day, engineers were able to make efficient and progressive improvements of the crash behaviour of the analyzed car body structure. The drive for improved crash worthiness in Europe has accelerated from the 1990s onwards, with the 1997 advent of Euro NCAP, with the involvement of Formula 1 expertise.
The 2004
PininfarinaPininfarina S.p.A. is an Italian car design firm and coachbuilder in Cambiano, Italy.Founded as Società anonima Carrozzeria Pinin Farina in 1930 by automobile designer and builder Battista "Pinin" Farina, Pininfarina has been employed by a wide variety of high-end automobile manufacturers,...
Nido Experimental Safety VehicleExperimental Safety Vehicle is the designation for experimental concept cars which are used to test car safety ideas.In 1970 the U.S. DOT announced its ESV project, the aim of which was to obtain safer vehicles by 1980. : A car produced by this effort was known as the Minicar RSV.In 1991, the ESV...
locates crumple zones
inside the Survival Cell. Those interior crumple zones decelerate a sled-mounted survival cell.
See also
- Automobile safety
Automobile safety is the study and practice of vehicle design, construction, and equipment to minimize the occurrence and consequences of automobile accidents. Automobile safety is the study and practice of vehicle design, construction, and equipment to minimize the occurrence and consequences of...
- Crash test
A crash test is a form of destructive testing usually performed in order to ensure safe design standards in crashworthiness and crash compatibility for various modes of transportation or related systems and components.- Types :...
- Crash simulation
A crash simulation is a virtual recreation of a destructive crash test of a car or a highway guard rail system using a computer simulation in order to examine the level of safety of the car and its occupants. Crash simulations are used by automakers during Computer-Aided Engineering analysis for...
- Finite element method
The finite element method is a numerical technique for finding approximate solutions of partial differential equations as well as integral equations...
- Guard rail#Automotive safety
- Crash barrier
- Impact attenuator
An impact attenuator, also known as a crash cushion or crash attenuator or cowboy cushions, is a device intended to reduce the damage done to structures, vehicles, and motorists resulting from a motor vehicle collision...
External links