Abstract:

A small test device of inter-collision sled was developed with a foundation of length 25 m and width 2.2m and without any fixed barrier. The test device used elastic ropes as driving force with drawing collision energy absorption tubes to transform collision force from traditional external force between sled and fixed barrier to internal force between test sled and counter-weight sled by head-on collision. A finite element method (FEM) established and some quasi-static tensile tests were used to investigate the friction coefficient between the energy absorption tubes and the compression block and the energy absorption characteristics of the tubes. The objective function extracted from two comparison displacement-force curves was determined by using a least square method. The simulation results show that the displacement-force curve and deformation mode of the simulation are in good agreement with these of the experiment when the friction coefficient is 0.177. Therefore, changing the structure parameters of energy absorption can reproduce the variable acceleration waveforms in
the Chinese National Standards, including GB15083-2006 and so on.

Key words: vehicle safety, sled tests, inter-collision test devices, quasi-static tests, absorption characteristics, waveform reproduce