Design of the impact attenuator for a Formula Student racing car: numerical simulation of the impact crash test

Abstract

Vehicle safety is one of the major research areas in automotive engineering. The car industry is developing new passive and active safety systems and techniques to increase the safety of vehicle occupants. To reduce the development and testing costs of a new safety design, it is recommendable to use computational crash simulations for early evaluation of safety behavior under vehicle impact test. A device which is intended to reduce the damage done to vehicle structures and the possible injury to passengers resulting from a collision is impact attenuator. Numerical simulation by using finite element methods and design of the impact attenuator of a Formula student car body, is presented in this paper. It was developed for an auto-cross racing car, with a small formula style, which was later manufactured, prepared, tested and demonstrated on the race competition. After initial study of the behaviour of impact attenuator and car body as independent structures, we have added links, which are connecting all parts in one assembly. Final results show the comparision between attenuator device, as the independent structure and two solutions of the complete assembly with the car body. All initial requirements were set in accordance with the 2008 Formula SAE rules. These requirements were completely satisfied with the final configuration of the impact attenuator. The main aspects of the research were oriented to get optimal values of kinetic energy evolution during the frontal impact, with the lowest initial deceleration.