Crash Test1

SEPTEMBER 2012
Steven Keller and Wayne Bahr

Fords safety experts talk exclusively about crash testing under the One Ford philosophy
Pedestrian impact
How Euro NCAPs tougher scoring system is driving up standards
Carbon ber
The long road to predicting the crash behavior of composite materials
Rollover innovation
The National Crash Analysis Centers new proposal for repeatable rollover testing
CRASH TEST ZONE
A look ahead to the innovative crash test technology at Automotive Testing Expo North America
CASE STUDIES
The safety development programs for the Volvo V40 and Mercedes-Benz GL
www.AutomotiveTestingTechnologyInternational.com
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CONTENTS
COVER STORY
10
Pedestrian impact
Euro NCAPs tougher standards are leading to safer vehicles. John OBrien has the story
FEATURES
02 04 06
Crash testing the big new SUV. By Matt Joy News and views from a booming market Our columnist makes the case for better marketing of vehicle crash safety A new crash test facility claims to be the worlds most accurate and reliable We head to two British crash test laboratories to discover why theyre busier than ever Innovations from racing and aerospace are yet to make the jump to street machines Research projects in Washington examining rollover testing and better frontal crash safety Automotive Testing Expo North America has the latest innovations in crash test technology Airbag pioneer, the 1974 Olds Toronado
Mercedes-Benz GL China roundup Lou Lombardo
Editors note
Hello, and welcome to my first issue of Crash Test Technology International . In this Olympic year, its a pleasure to have picked up the editorial baton from Adam Gavine! A recurring theme in crash testing is priorities. The current myriad of mandatory tests all have their roots in real-life crash situations, but within that body of testing and its surrounding pool of expertise, there will always be differences of opinion as to whats more important. Take the IIHSs new smalloverlap impact test. Now, nobody is belittling the severity of this type of accident in the real world, but in this issue youll discover a leading
18 30 36 42 48 72
Transport Canada
academics opinion on why this test shouldnt necessarily be next on the to-do list, as well as a major OEMs view on the implications the new test has for vehicle design. Id add to that mix the equally valid goal of reducing vehicle weight, to the benefit not only of fuel consumption and the environment, but also active safety and the vehicles ability to avoid an accident in the first place. Truth is, there are no right and wrong answers here. I only hope that test-setters everywhere make the best decisions they can, based on the biggest possible picture. Graham Heeps
Site visit: MIRA and Millbrook Carbon crash structures University focus: NCAC Crash Test Zone
Crash test legends

INTERVIEWS
Editor Graham Heeps Assistant editors Rachel Evans, John OBrien Chief sub editor Alex Bradley Deputy chief sub editor Nick Shepherd Proofreaders Aubrey Jacobs-Tyson, Frank Millard
Head of production & logistics Ian Donovan Deputy production manager Lewis Hopkins Production team Carole Doran, Cassie Inns, Robyn Skalsky
Contributors this issue Matt Joy, Lou Lombardo, Jim McCraw, Stefan Sagner
Circulation manager Suzie Matthews
24 52
Steven Kenner and Wayne Bahr share their crash test insights with Jim McCraw
Ford
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Crash Test Technology International
SEPTEMBER 2012
001
WHATS NEW?
Mercedes GL
WORDS BY MATT JOY
The front (FAR LEFT) and side (ABOVE) crash load paths of the latest GL
Ensuring a large SUV protects its occupants and other road users presents a signicant challenge. We spoke to Thomas Unselt, safety concepts engineer from Daimler AG, about the testing of Mercedes new GL-Class
Almost irrespective of the economic climate, the publics desire for large SUVs remains strong, particularly in the USA and wealthier areas of Asia. Yet the development challenges remain the same, and while passenger safety is relatively straightforward thanks to the physical size, this same size and mass becomes a disadvantage in respect of crash compatibility and pedestrian safety. At the US launch of the second-generation MercedesBenz GL-Class, CTTI was guided through the test process by engineer, Thomas Unselt. What was the passive safety program for the GL-Class? The crash test program began with the rst prototypes, as far back as 2007-2008, and continued until mid-2012. All the crash tests were carried out at the Mercedes-Benz Technology Centre in Stuttgart, and more than 60 prototypes were crashed during the program, from early development mules to nal production-standard versions. Was the program the same even though the GL-Class is a revised rather than brandnew model? It was a whole new crash test program for the GL-Class. We develop our cars for the US market and for the European market, so there are a lot more ratings and test requirements that we have to fulll. The homologation tests were carried out exclusively for the GL program. Given the relationship between the GL- and MLClasses, were you able to save time by sharing information across the programs? The ML is a year older but it is the same platform, so there is information that you can use from the original program. But of course you must be careful to do all the tests with all the cars: we dont spare any! Q: What are the particular challenges in terms of passive safety when designing a large SUV such as this? Euro NCAP has very specic pedestrian impact requirements and obviously this becomes a greater challenge with a larger vehicle this is why the GL-Class has the active hood system. For this kind of SUV, it is not a problem for the crash tests it has a strong structure. At the beginning of the structure [the front] it can be made not very strong so compatibility [in two-vehicle collisions] gives smaller cars some of the SUVs crumple zone. Are there any particular developments on GL where you feel you have made signicant progress? We have the adaptive front airbags for the driver and front passenger, which have been seen elsewhere in MercedesBenz vehicles, but this is the rst adaptation for GL. In your opinion, what are the signicant challenges that lie ahead for you in terms of passive safety? The interesting thing for crash testing in the future is the new IIHS small [25%] overlap test. They have tested some cars already and are developing the crash protocol. It is very challenging for many cars. From our point of view, this small overlap isnt found in accident data, but they will introduce it. It will bring more weight into the vehicles as it does not hit the structure that is designed for a 50% offset impact.
002

SEPTEMBER 2012
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WHATS NEW?
China roundup
Development news and views in the booming Chinese crash-test market Volkswagens view
China is very active in adopting parts of both FMVSS requirements and UN ECE regulation, and it is also creating a set of Chinaspecic requirements, explains Rolf Bergmann, a senior expert for global safety affairs at Volkswagen (see also page 10), Together with other auto makers, we are trying to convince those responsible to adopt existing, well-developed test setups instead of creating new ones; and, most importantly, rank the introduction of new safety requirements according to the ndings from local accident research, which in the past was initiated by Volkswagen together with Tongji University. On top of that, there is C-NCAP, which very recently changed to more stringent protocols. We have a wellde ned job split with the engineering departments of our joint ventures in Changchun and Shanghai, including safety development and crash testing. We recently opened a new crash test facility in Changchun and we are building a new one in Shanghai to manage the workload more efciently. However, nal approval for all Volkswagen vehicles lies in the hands of our headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany.
Launcher contracts
Aries Ingeniera y Sistemas has been awarded new contracts with two Chinese clients Shanghai Yangfeng Johnsons Controls Seating Co and Dongfeng Motor Group Ltd to provide several Universal Launchers. Aries, which has been active in Asia for several years and has an ofce in Shanghai, has delivered customized solutions for clients in various countries within the region, including India, Malaysia, South Korea, and China. The Universal Launcher is an impact test system capable of launching different body forms against both interior and exterior elements of the test vehicle. The system uses a highly versatile design which allows for the testing of a complete vehicle or of individual parts. To test pedestrian impacts, Aries Ingeniera y Sistemas has designed the system to launch instrumented legs, body forms, and heads with high velocity and impact point precision. The results from these tests are an efcient tool to help develop strategies for reducing injuries during pedestrian impacts. Jorge de Goyeneche, Aries safety test technologies manager, said, The signing of these contracts signicantly contributes to the advancement of the Chinese automotive industry, helping it improve overall vehicle safety, and further solidies Aries Ingeniera y Sistemas position in the Chinese market.
Facility deal
Messring has recently been awarded the contract for a huge Car2Car project by SMTC in Shanghai. SMTC belongs to the SAIC group, which is projected to be among the top-10 largest automotive manufacturers globally by 2020 and includes notable brands such as MG and Roewe (formerly known as Rover). With its core expertise in test facilities and data acquisition systems, Messring says it is focusing more than ever on active safety testing solutions with the SMTC project. Messrings new ve-axis load cell wall, the M=WALL with integrated innovative M=BUS technology (see also page 58), will be tted in the crash test facility, as well as cameras, data acquisition, lighting, and test evaluation tools. The new SMTC facility is expected to go online in 2014.
SEPTEMBER 2012
experts talk Fords safety testing about crash y exclusively Ford philosoph under the One
Steven Keller
and Wayne Bahr
Pedestrian impact
s How Euro NCAPsystem g tougher scorin rds is driving up standa
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This is a fantastic show. I was here two years ago, and this year I have doubled my lead count and the quality of leads is 10-fold. It is way higher quality, with people who are really looking to buy instead of kicking tires. The market is turning around!
Kevin Mueller, Zwick USA
OPINION
Lombardo
SAFETY SELLS CARS, BUT IT NEEDS MARKETING, TOO
Worldwide, several thousand motorists die each day of crash injuries; many more are seriously injured. And in the next decade, automobile use is expected to double. No wonder the UN has declared a decade of action to save lives from crash injuries. The reality is that people need safety, want safety, and are willing to pay for it. In the USA, Consumer Reports recently noted that safety remains the number one factor for consumers when choosing a new car. Meanwhile, NHTSA recently reported that the number of crash deaths in the rst three months of 2012 surged by 13%. At this rate, the USA can expect crash deaths to rise again to about 100 per day in 2012. DOT policy places a value on a statistical life saved at US$6.2 million. People do not place a dollar value on their own lives or the lives of loved ones. But the DOT value serves as one measure of the importance of safety. It includes values for economic costs and values for pain and suffering avoided. The USA has spent billions of dollars on auto and highway safety. One measure of the result is that about 500,000 lives have been saved by NHTSA standards and programs. Applying the DOT value of US$6.2 million per life saved, DOT interventions saved about US$3 trillion. As cars become safer, NHTSA estimates that the number of lives saved due to safety technologies is growing each year. Although there has been progress, lets remember how much further and faster we must go. More than two million lives have been lost in America alone since NHTSA was formed. Just during President Obamas administration, more than 100,000 Americans died of crash injuries more than in the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars combined. Crash testing is win, win, win for consumers, companies (auto makers, suppliers, insurers), and governments. Crash testing can save consumers lives and livelihoods. It saves the reputations and money of companies. And for governments, it saves tax revenues and expenditures. But the degree to which safety is actually delivered to whom, by whom, when, and where is dependent on the degree to which safety is marketed. Volvo publicly adopted a goal of zero deaths in a Volvo by 2020, but has limited marketing capability to monetize this advantage. In fact, advertising budget aside, Volvos marketing has often missed the chance to reinforce its earned reputation for safety in its advertising. As the legendary art director George Lois wrote in Damn Good Advice (for people with talent) , A big idea can change world culture. Imagine what a major marketing effort can do using the big idea: safety sells. Think of some of the organizations working to get crash test results to the people: NHTSA and the proliferating other NCAP programs around the world; IIHS in its excellent crash testing for the media, including more than 1,000 crash test videos on YouTube; Consumer Reports for its millions of readers; The Center for Auto Safety in its annual Car Book; and the media, which spreads make and model crash test information in words, pictures, and videos worldwide. Think of the big marketing budgets of auto companies ranging up to US$3 billion in 2011. Then think of the small marketing content that often misses by miles the big idea that safety sells. In July this year, Automotive News reported that the marketing spend on the Smart amounted to US$2,711 per vehicle sold, while spending on a MINI amounted to US$385 per vehicle sold. How many consumers get the message to buy these vehicles because safety sells? Now ask yourself: Cant we do better than this by using the big idea to help us all? Crash testing leads to safer vehicles, safer vehicles save lives, and people buy safer vehicles. A virtuous cycle in which we all can win if we use the marketing power of the big idea.
When Louis V. Lombardo joined NHTSA in 1978, he became an advocate for adopting airbags and other crashworthy measures, and played a key role in the airbags adoption. He has since spent time at the IIHS, more time at NHTSA, and is now campaigning for better emergency response to car crashes. After 40 years of dedicated work, Lombardo continues to have constructive dialog with his auto-safety colleagues and government ofcials, and he insists theres much more to be done. Lous website is www.careforcrashvictims.com
The degree to which safety is actually delivered to whom, by whom, when, and where is dependent on the degree to which safety is marketed
006

SEPTEMBER 2012
More new exhibitors, more new technology

We had 80% more leads than we expected, and we expect to turn 50% of them into sales. This is the best show weve been to in years!
Kati Cole, Silicon Designs
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October 23, 24 and 25, 2012

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COVER STORY
Pedestrian zone
As changes are implemented in the Euro NCAP rating system to ensure an even focus on all aspects of crash safety, just how important will pedestrian impact testing become to manufacturers? We talk exclusively to Michiel van Ratingen and leading OEMs
WORDS BY JOHN OBRIEN
010

SEPTEMBER 2012
COVER STORY
In terms of crash test safety, pedestrian impact testing has not traditionally received the attention of other elds of research. For years, occupants within the standard-issue, one-ton-plus metal box have been catered for with airbags, pre-tensioners, and various other safety devices. The safety of those unfortunate enough to be on the outside looking in, has generally been left to a higher power. But with changes to the Euro NCAP scoring system introduced in the past 12 months to place an even emphasis on all aspects of crash testing in the European market, pedestrian safety is nally set to receive equal weighting to occupant testing. >
SEPTEMBER 2012
011
COVER STORY
The apparent conict between styling and pedestrian safety is the most difcult factor that any OEM has to deal with, explains Euro NCAP secretary general, Michiel van Ratingen. That has been in the background for many years, and why pedestrian safety has always been given less attention; because styling is more important to the manufacturer than pedestrian protection. If you go back through the history of Euro NCAP, when we started doing subsystem and systems tests on the front end of a vehicle it was around 1997, he continues. It took, really, until 2007/2008 to see any response in vehicle engineering that lead to better results and improvements. The slow evolution in pedestrian safety has prompted van Ratingens organization to take a stance of enough is enough. Most recently, the requirement for a ve-star score was increased from 40% to 60% for 2012, with further changes to the criteria planned from 2016. Van Ratingen is hoping these revisions will see a shift in perspective from automotive manufacturers, stating that the excuse for styling negating safety no longer stands. Since the various regulations have come into force, that argument doesnt really hold any more as they now have to do it, he states. Over the past few years, we have given impact testing a lot more attention on how it affects the overall rating and we are seeing pedestrian safety become of much greater engineering importance to the OEMs. This evolution of impact testing has been a two-way avenue, with Euro NCAP allowing the manufacturers some say in how the tests were undertaken. One of the biggest criticisms we had was over the location at which we tested the vehicle. These so-called test points were chosen quite arbitrarily by a lab assistant, so the results, for the OEM, were sometimes hard to predict, explains van Ratingen.
RIGHT: Michiel van Ratingen from Euro NCAP. FAR RIGHT: Vehicle marked up for pedestrian impact testing
The apparent conict between styling and pedestrian safety is the most difcult factor for an OEM to deal with
Michiel van Ratingen, secretary general, Euro NCAP
Q&A with Rolf Bergmann, senior expert on global safety affairs, Volkswagen
are already available in Volkswagen vehicles. We are now waiting for Euro NCAP to publish testing and assessment requirements that include this technology. Probably the most challenging aspect of this for vehicle manufacturers is the required tment rate for active safety systems. As for the side-pole test, we appreciate Euro NCAPs position in switching to the 75 pole test as soon as it becomes a mandatory requirement in Europe. Unfortunately, on the side barrier test, Euro NCAP is now introducing the fourth side barrier test setup beside ECE 95, FMVSS 214, and IIHS, and there is no signicant proof that the introduction of this new test setup will further improve vehicle safety. Please explain how youre improving your pedestrian protection scores, both in terms of physical testing and virtually. Whats the biggest challenge in this area? Euro NCAP results clearly indicate that our vehicles have a very high passive pedestrian safety level. We believe that future enhancements in pedestrian protection should build on that high level and focus on avoidance technology. AEB systems that detect pedestrians can help to reduce impact energy signicantly or avoid a collision altogether. We therefore appreciate the introduction of pedestriandetecting AEB within the Euro NCAP protocol in 2016. The introduction of the grid method in 2013, the newly developed FlexPLI lower leg impactor in 2014, and the update on the upper leg test in 2015, already require a lot of additional virtual and physical testing, and will further enhance the passive pedestrian safety level. Instead of further raising the bar, we would prefer Euro NCAP to work on testing and assessment procedures for AEB pedestrian systems. How accurate are virtual dummies compared with physical testing? Volkswagen does research on human models, has access to digital human models, and participates in research projects to validate the behavior of human models in vehicles. Human models are neither standardized, nor do they correlate to validated dummies currently used in crash tests. A user community will be required to achieve an accepted standard model, a well-documented validation basis, and further improvements of human models. How do you think crash testing will change in the next ve years? Whats the biggest challenge ahead? With the inauguration of ASEAN NCAP earlier this year, we now have nine consumer crash test programs over the world and there might be more to come in the future. As a globally operating vehicle manufacturer we fully support this
Its now harder than previously to get ve stars from Euro NCAP. How has this affected VWs crash test programs? The constantly improving requirements of Euro NCAP are not really new for us. Nevertheless, the current developments within Euro NCAP are critical to future requirements. Much of the change is to do with the introduction of active safety technology such as autonomous emergency braking (AEB, which will soon detect pedestrians as well as vehicles and xed objects), lane departure warning, and intelligent speed assist. Most of these technologies
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SEPTEMBER 2012
COVER STORY
In other words, theyd put a lot of effort into the vehicle, theyd claim, and the results were still as bad as they were before. So we agreed in 2008, when we introduced the operating system that came into effect a year later, that we would sit down with them and make the requirements more transparent. We worked out a method by which they would have much clearer targets to work toward. Developments in computer-aided engineering (CAE) software have also boosted the results being seen by Euro NCAP. The exibility and repeatability of CAE software has enabled manufacturers to meet the more stringent testing parameters. Human body models are a good step in the right direction as [in this application] theyre a lot more realistic than using full-scale standing dummies, van Ratingen explains. Its a lot harder to capture the real kinematics of a human rolling over the bonnet [hood], than it is for a human body model. Two years ago, we decided to allow human body modeling to be used to demonstrate performance. For items such as the deployable bonnet, its crucial to know that it will deploy in time, so that the clearance between the engine block and the bonnet is there at the moment that the head hits the bonnet. We believe that the human body models are the best tools to use at the moment, to predict when the timing actually occurs. As the experts we canvassed from Volkswagen and Volvo conrm (see sidebars, below and page 15), a mix of passive technology and active safety devices is seemingly the unanimous solution to reducing pedestrian casualties in the future, from both manufacturers and Euro NCAP. The ever-expanding diversity of vehicles on the road now, from two-seat city cars to HGVs, is making such devices more important than ever.
Volkswagens Up has city emergency braking to prevent or mitigate lowspeed impacts
development, but would like to see worldwide harmonized test requirements. As mentioned above, it doesnt make sense to have locally different test setups for the same safety requirement. The introduction of global
technical regulations (GTRs) can help to make safety development more effective. We support Global NCAP to bring forward the GTR concept into the NCAP world. With more active safety systems entering
the market, crash testing might change. Whereas in the past there was a strict distinction between active and passive safety testing, these areas now merge. We will see more crash tests that take the pre-impact
phase into account. AEB systems, for example, will reduce the impact speed, while safety engineers want to understand what happens in a crash test with a vehicle thats braking.
SEPTEMBER 2012
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COVER STORY
Q&A with Thomas Broberg, senior technical advisor for safety, Volvo
Pedestrian impact testing is a growing focus in vehicle safety development. How does Volvo conduct its testing? If you look at crash test dummies today, theyre all made in a sitting posture, not a standing posture. There are a few companies that have looked into that and are doing some things, but not many, so most of the pedestrian testing is done using CAE with humanoid models. But when it comes to verication, or system verication, we use the different types of impacter, be it leg or head forms. With regard to current legislation, how does Volvo feel that it is coping with pedestrian impact? From a homologation perspective, thats quite easy we have to full it! Euro NCAP is also driving the performance, but if you look at our technology strategy, its very holistic in its approach. In 2010, we launched our pedestrian detection with full auto-brake technology, which is actually a technology to help avoid collisions completely in some circumstances, or to simply reduce the speed of impact. If you look at the vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians, the speed at impact has a very high inuence on the outcome.
Pedestrian detection with full auto brake has been introduced on new Volvo models
People are soft and cars are hard, theres no way of getting around that, but that hasnt stopped us from trying to soften, or cushion, the impact when it occurs as much as possible. With the latest car we have just launched, the V40 (p16), the pedestrian airbag technology is addressing that, but that car also features the pedestrian detection with full auto brake. So you have both active safety technology as well as passive, that addresses those areas. How much of a driver for improving pedestrian safety will the recently revised Euro NCAP ratings be?
I think we are already seeing that today. The results are pushing the industry in the right direction, putting further emphasis on pedestrian collisions. For sure, Europe has always been a key driver in this eld, as well as Japan. I think looking at it, there are other countries starting to follow like the USA, and others. If you look at the number of injuries and fatalities, this is an issue that needs to be addressed in almost every country. At Volvo we are driven by our Vision 2020 and as such are trying to take this holistic approach; addressing it with both active and protective safety technology.
Finally, what do you feel will be the biggest trend in safety development over the coming ve years? I think we at Volvo will see an evolution of the passive safety technologies, where we will begin addressing more and more scenarios, more complex scenarios. And then, of course, there will be a revolution in active safety, as we are only just beginning our journey when it comes to both automatic driving and connectivity and how we can use and share information between vehicles as well as between vehicles and the infrastructure. Like I say, I feel that journey has just begun.
Passive and active safety devices are fundamental to scoring top marks, especially in certain types of vehicle. From a pedestrians point of view, the front ends of a supermini, a luxury car, or MPV are very different, explains van Ratingen. For certain types of vehicle geometry, it will be more difcult to achieve a good score than with others. It will really depend on how the human
Physical impacters are key to pedestrian safety verication, alongside digital tools
rolls off the hood, where the head is likely to hit the structure, and so on. But for some of these classes of vehicles, specically the sportier styled models where there is very little clearance between the bonnet and engine block, the active safety systems are the only way that they can guarantee a ve-star result. Van Ratingen is impressed with Volvos pedestrian airbag system on the V40, too. We normally default the A-pillars red as they are very stiff, he adds. Until recently, there was very little that OEMs could do to make those softer for a head impact, for instance. We normally give no points for that part of the test unless the OEM can show that they have done something to improve the situation to where we can actually test that part. In the case of the Volvo, by covering the lower part of the A-pillar with an airbag, we have enabled them to test with the airbag deployed, which gives them a much better score, making the ve-star rating much more achievable. The development of materials and structures across the cars frontal area is also contributing to better pedestrian impact scores. Technology and ability comes into play, too; composite materials on the hood werent there before, but now they are pretty much commonplace, he explains. Indeed, Euro NCAP is keen not to let any single
SEPTEMBER 2012
015
COVER STORY
development area plateau. From the passive safety point of view, there is still a little bit more that we can achieve from simple designs. Weve seen some excellent vehicles over the past year or so; the Ford Focus made history in Euro NCAP [with a pedestrian score of 72%], and we have had some pick-up trucks [like the Ford Ranger] do particularly well, too, explains van Ratingen. But we do believe that there is still some room for further improvement, of course, and it is the avoidance technology that has to be added to this topic. Certainly for vulnerable road users, avoiding a crash is much more efcient that trying to mitigate it and the consequences. Thats why, in 2016, Euro NCAP will add autonomous emergency braking for pedestrians, inside the pedestrian score. From that moment on, you will still need
Its hoped that new technologies such as pedestrian airbags will reduce impacts around the A-pillar and windshield
to maintain the ve-star passive performance. But thatll be a starting point where we will see active safety coming much more seriously and prominently into the scoring of pedestrian protection. The main question for future systems will be how avoidance technology will be incorporated, and how the passive safety will make use of the active safety information, he continues. The next generation of systems will combine the two and identify the type of crash, the type of vulnerable road user that is in front of the car, and whether potentially the car is likely to strike them. It will then make an assessment as to whether the vehicle can actually brake in time. If not, it will deploy some sort of passive safety devices in advance, to give optimum protection to all involved.
Case study: Volvo V40

Volvo is the rst OEM to bring pedestrian airbag technology to the market, featuring on the latest V40 hatchback. The airbag is activated using seven sensors in the front bumper. When a pedestrian hits the sensors, the severity of the impact is measured and, if necessary, the airbag inates over the windshield and A-pillar. Most of the development was done with virtual models, says Volvos Thomas Broberg. The different parts of the system the hood, airbag, and the sensing system were tested separately, before various types of impacters and pedestrian dummies were sent toward the front bumper, hood, window, and A-pillar area to verify and assess the performance of the complete system. This was, of course, in conjunction with humanoid models, where you get better human-like kinematics, adds Broberg. The airbags location posed particular development challenges. The airbag is on the outside of the vehicle, or actually in-between the outside of the vehicle and the engine compartment, which is a very erce environment from a temperature and contextual point of view, he says. So for this, we had to develop some new, additional rigs in order to prove the technology, which allowed us to take into consideration engine temperatures and weather conditions. Conceptual work, followed by sled testing and further renement, was carried out on the system at the companys crash-test center in Gothenburg. The pedestrian airbag technology was tested more than 150 times in the lab in addition to the approximately 1,000 computer simulations of it. For the V40 as a whole, Volvo conducted approximately 25,000 crash-test simulation runs.
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TRANSPORT CANADA
New leaf
How Transport Canadas claims that its new crash test facility in Blainville is the most accurate and reliable in the world could indeed be justied
WORDS BY STEFAN SAGNER
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TRANSPORT CANADA
In the idyllic little town of Blainville, in the Canadian province of Quebec, there is a crash test facility that is claimed to be the most accurate in the world. It belongs to Transport Canada, the Canadian Ministry of Transport, and, for a fee, is also available to private or partly state-run companies for testing. Built by Messring Systembau, based in Krailling, Germany, it went into service in 2011, following more than two years of planning and building. The experimental procedure is demanding: two cars each weighing around 1 metric ton, crammed with sensors and the most modern measurement technology, are ready for impact. One vehicle is accelerated along the test track at 37mph (60km/h) and then, after driving more than 328ft (100m), is hit by the second car, which is moving at a speed of 50mph (80km/h), at an angle of exactly 90 within 1mm of the height of the B-pillar. In theory, it sounds like a mathematical task that is solvable; in practice, for those who have to grapple with real factors such as friction coefcients, temperature uctuations, pressure loss, and material wear, this is a formidable challenge for technicians and engineers. In Blainville, theory and practice join forces with precision. In the crash test scenario above, the deviation from the ultra-thin marking on the B-pillar was less than 5mm horizontally and 0.5mm vertically. Just the way you would want a hit to be, says Alain Bussires, president of operating company PMG, which runs the test facility on behalf of Transport Canada. The results we achieve here exceed all our expectations. The constantly high accuracy is unparalleled, he adds. The 5,300m 2 test center, which was nanced by the Canadian government with an investment of around CA$15 million, has been running since April 2011 with a considerably wider range of functions. It is claimed that no other test facility in the world produces work that is as accurate as the Transport Canada Motor Vehicle Test and Research Centre. And that is despite its enormous size and
ABOVE: Blainville is publicly accessible for frontal, backward and sideway crashes with two vehicles
LEFT: During the crash test, over 200 sensors and cameras record hundreds of measurement readings and images
SEPTEMBER 2012
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Acceleration Target Test 1 Accel Test 2 Accel Test 3 Accel Pulse P1 T0 +.255 g limit Pulse P1 T0 -.255 g limit Pulse P1 accel slope high Pulse P1 accel slope low Pulse P1 accel plat top Pulse P1 accel plat bottom Pulse P1 accel 6 g limit 1 Pulse P1 accel 6 g limit 2 Pulse P1 accel 1 g limit Pulse P1 accel -1 g limit Pulse P1 Time "s" limit Pulse P1 Time "t" limit Velocity Target Test 1 Vel Test 2 Vel Test 3 Vel Low Corridor High Corridor
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25 20 15
Seat Pulse
50 40 30 20 10 0
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TRANSPORT CANADA
CAPE drives for the future
By continually investing in advanced testing solutions, the Center for Advanced Product Evaluation (CAPE) a division of IMMI has established itself as North Americas premier crash and structural test facility for commercial vehicles. CAPEs recent expansion and upgrade of its 50,000ft2 facility included a Seattle Safety 2.0MN reverse ring ServoSled, which expands CAPEs dynamic sled testing capabilities and enables almost any test pulse to be recreated. The ServoSled can perform tests up to 104g, with changes in velocity up to 56mph. As well as offering a high level of accuracy and repeatability, the sled provides extremely high-frequency response and inherent negative- g and side-impact pulse capabilities. For automotive and accident reconstruction customers, the inherent negative- g capability enables them to conduct tests with complex pulses that cannot be reproduced on other types of sleds. The high acceleration capability will enable motorsport customers to push their designs further and approach the 100 g target for testing. Additionally, child-seat manufacturers can quickly change pulse characteristics to mimic various sled pulses without having to test multiple sleds. By expanding our space, CAPE also now stands as the test house of choice for OEM litigation defense, adds Chezem. Our enhanced facility enables us to respond quickly and accurately in reconstructing accident scenarios.
The new ServoSled enables us to offer the best technology available to our customer base. Were excited about how this technology can be used by our automotive, child seat, motorsports, and accident reconstruction clients, says Tom Chezem, vice president of CAPE. With the new sled, CAPE can offer better support to manufacturers in a continued effort to improve safety.
the fact that it can stage not only crashes against xed barriers, but also collisions between two vehicles and at any angle between 90 and 180. The secret of this accuracy lies in the construction of the facility and the way that all the components used are an exact coordinated t, says Dierk Arp, CEO of Messring, who commissioned the planning, production, and installation of the facility: The various puzzle pieces of a crash test facility have to t together perfectly and that requires a lot of experience. It begins with the quality of the mechanical components, which are all manufactured in Germany and tested in advance by Messring engineers at an in-house facility. And it encompasses other complex processes, from structural analysis through software and measuring technology, up to the safety systems that protect the engineers and technicians at the location. In Blainville, where vehicles weighing up to 40 metric tons are tested, the mechanical components have to be able to withstand extreme loads. The 722ft-long (220m) hall was planned in such a way that the enormous horizontal forces can be deected over the foundation. All the xtures are rmly attached to the building, says Arp. Despite the brute force that prevails here, the facility is almost indestructible. An electrically driven (approx. 1,600PS) trolley pulls the vehicles along a MicroTrack rail embedded in the oor. The rail, which was developed by Messring specically for this type of facility, is just 2.76in (7cm) wide, enabling traveling distances of millimeter precision. In crash tests, vehicles accelerate up to a maximum speed of 75mph (120km/h), before they hit the 300-ton reinforced concrete block, which serves as a stationary obstacle. In staged crashes between two vehicles, speeds of up to 62mph (100km/h) can be reached on each track. With a diameter of around 131ft (40m), the safety zone is dimensioned so that a crash can be carried out at any desired angle without any risk. Special software is required for the facilitys control system. It takes all the parameters of the testing procedure into consideration, and offers access to all the safety systems, while ensuring that the valuable data from the
crash test is reliably recorded without a break. With CrashSoft, Messring has developed its own program, which gives a detailed overview of all the parameters and measuring instrumentation throughout the test. Arp is, of course, not willing to disclose details of the design or the algorithms used, but comments, Our software guarantees maximum safety for the test engineers while providing highly precise data evaluation. All the relevant components of a crash test facility are regulated with CrashSoft: from the exact control of the various measuring devices, determining, and evaluating the data, through to the technical safety aspects such as the automatic locking system of the hall door. The data obtained during the test is available to the operations engineer for immediate evaluation. Because of all the testing instrumentation being synchronized and the userfriendly interface of our software, our facilities can be operated by one person alone, explains Arp. Using an online interface, Messring can also monitor all the facilities
ABOVE: Collisions between two vehicles can be staged at any angle between 90 and 180 at the facility
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Australia involving paired perpendicular and oblique pole tests is nearing completion. The results will serve to provide technical support to the side impact Global Technical Regulation that is under development. Tests have also been conducted by PMG in a variety of congurations for private clients, but for reasons of client condentiality the details cannot be divulged. The scrap that is produced at the crash tests in Blainville generally serves a good purpose. New types of vehicles, waiting for approval for the Canadian market, are thoroughly checked here to see if they comply with Canadian safety regulations. Coaches and school buses are tested to check that they offer sufcient protection for passengers in a worst-case scenario. Manufacturers let new products be tested childrens car seats, for example. And specic crashes are also simulated to resolve liability questions, for instance. The list of clients who register for testing is accordingly varied: among them are various automotive manufacturers, insurance companies and consumer protection organizations, as well as industrial or government enterprises. Maximum precision is of paramount importance with all the tests. The more precise the test, the more meaningful results we achieve, says Arp. There are no other facilities worldwide that work so accurately and reliably at such a high level. Since its opening, the facility in Blainville has been in full swing. At peak periods, a crash test takes place every day. The preparation, including computer simulation, is complex, often taking several hours, or even days. Then the actual test is over within a few seconds. During the crash, more than 200 sensors and cameras record hundreds of measurement readings and images. Part of the recording camera is placed under the crash site in a pit area in the oor protected by a thick acrylic glass panel.
ABOVE: The 220m-long hall was planned in such a way that enormous horizontal forces can be deected over the foundation
The more precise the test, the more meaningful results we achieve. No other facilities worldwide work so accurately and reliably at such a high level
Dierk Arp, Messring
around the globe by computer from Krailling, and can also accommodate clients requests to change technical settings. The test center is, due to its size and facilities, exceptionally versatile an essential precondition for protable operations. Blainville is the only publicly accessible crash test facility in North America, where frontal, backward, and sideways crashes with two vehicles can be carried out, explains Suzanne Tylko from Transport Canada. We let everything that has wheels crash together here, from small cars to large trucks, even up to railway carriages. All types of vehicles can now be tested, including new lightweight vehicles with very low ground clearance. Transport Canada has been conducting moving car to moving car frontal narrow offset tests, as well as moving car to moving car perpendicular and oblique side impact tests with excellent results. A cooperative program between Transport Canada and the Government of
Messring was awarded the contract to build this unique crash test facility by the Canadian Ministry of Transport primarily because of its high level of technical know-how and its many years of experience in this area. A crucial factor for us was the high level of precision when monitoring the vehicle direction and the speed when one or two vehicles crash, explains Tylko, the crash test expert. Or to use the words of Dierk Arp: Our facility scraps vehicles superlatively. Future programs are expected to investigate front and rear seat occupant protection in car-to-car narrow offset crashes, car-to-car side impact crashes and compare the results to current international requirements. The development of WorldSID dummies and associated sensor technologies like the Rib-Eye, a multipoint optical chest deection sensor will expand to include the WorldSID female and the THOR family of dummies.
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INTERVIEW
States of the art

WORDS BY JIM McCRAW
For a company that started out humbly 110 years ago, Ford has been crash testing regularly since 1954, and continues to be a world leader in safety innovations. The two top men in Dearborn share their insight
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SEPTEMBER 2012
INTERVIEW
We are facing a proliferation of requirements and a lack of convergence or harmonization. That drives workload and cost of business relative to the markets that we serve
Steven Kenner, global director of the automotive safety ofce, Ford
Ford Motor Company was the rst American car company to believe that safety can sell cars, offering factory-installed seatbelts, padded dashboards, and deep-dish breakaway steering wheels starting with its 1956 passenger cars. The company has been building on that start ever since, most recently as the rst company in the world to offer rear-seat inatable seatbelts for child health protection. Steven M. Kenner, Fords global director of the automotive safety ofce, sustainability, environment & safety engineering, says that the companys One Ford worldwide approach to crash testing enables the teams around the world to act as one global organization. We can now leverage our safety expertise across the globe. We know who all the experts are that work on safety, and we make sure that we leverage their expertise and make sure that we dont replicate it in each region. We leverage it where it exists today. Its the same with our global assets relating to testing. We can now leverage those instead of replicating and get the capacity utilization of our facilities up very high and then make careful, measured decisions about whether we want to increase our investment and create more of those, versus just doing a good job of using our assets around the globe. Kenner says that the global around-the-world, aroundthe-clock capability of crash testing and analysis goes with the collaboration that the crash-testing staff has with the design teams and the safety experts, using computers and software to predict vehicle, system, and occupant behaviors well up front, long before the rst impact testing is done.
SEPTEMBER 2012
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INTERVIEW
We have collaborated together to make sure we know what the requirements are for the public domain, as well as the regulatory requirements. Weve done the analysis of the designs to determine whether or not we think we will be able to pass, and then look at places where we can commonize parts, or where we need to be unique in some places. And then we get to a place where we can run all of the crash testing, either in the USA or Europe. They can run each others without having to send a vehicle to Europe to test for European requirements. The experts in Europe help us to design the vehicle to make sure that we understand and have designs capable of meeting the requirements for Europe as well. Kenner says its not as if the team designs a car completely, it fails, and then everyone is called in to help them x it. Rather, every design is capable of passing rst time out because of all the hard work done up front. Wayne Bahr, global chief safety engineer, body engineering, North American engineering, is the other half of Fords top management team for crash testing. He says, Half of my department around the world is computeraided engineering. We do a signicant amount of work up front to ensure that we are going to meet the requirement before we ever test anything. Then, once we build our models, we are able to test the vehicle through different test modes, depending on what market were in, whether its a regulatory requirement or a public-domain requirement. When we get down to the testing portion of it, its really the verication of our designs. Bahr says the global situation gives Ford the ability to ex its resources. He cites the relatively new pedestrian protection requirements that came to America from Europe, saying that the European expertise was invaluable when it came to getting American designs right rst time. Similarly, Bahr says, when theres a global lead platform thats being done in Europe, they leverage our expertise in America for IIHS or NHTSA requirements. But no matter how well you do in terms of designs, the reason why we test is to ensure that our customers dont have an issue, and also to ensure that we do meet our design guidelines and meet the requirements. The beauty is, if we do have an issue, we can set up a video teleconference, or we can put an expert on a plane to get to that location and help solve the issue. Sometimes, you just need eyes and ears on the ground to help solve an issue. He adds, Because of the workload, if the staff is constrained in one region, Ford has the ability to design, build prototypes, develop and test, pretty much anywhere in the world, we can wind up exing our resources. Bahr says Ford uses a combination of software CATIA 5 for design and engineering, and three tools for prove-out, LS-Dyna, RADIOSS, and MADYMO to predict material, component, and system behaviors in crash situations and occupant behaviors in crash situations. Kenner points out that the huge Chinese market will soon see 15 new Ford models, all to be introduced by 2015. He says the companys B, C, and C/D cars are now on global platforms, but must still be tuned and rened for the Chinese market standards, which are loosely based on Euro requirements. With those unique requirements, they are not only able to create an NCAP test protocol, they are also able to
Fords inatable rear seatbelts debuted on the 2011 Ford Explorer; Ford eventually plans to offer inatable seat belt technology in vehicles globally
Ford by numbers
2 major crash test facilities, in Dearborn, Michigan, USA, and Merkenich, Germany 30 maximum number of highspeed digital cameras used in a crash test, with 1,000-frames-persecond capability 100 crash dummies in Fords inventory 700 crash tests carried out at Dearborn in 2011 1,800 Dearborn sled tests in 2011 12,500 samples per second of data recorded over as many as 300 channels 19,000 crash tests run since 1954
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INTERVIEW
Tested to the MAX
To ensure the new European-market Ford B-MAXs easy-access door system meets the companys safety standards, Ford developed unique crash-test equipment and implemented a unique test procedure. The B-segment MPV has a door system that integrates central body pillars into hinged front doors and sliding rear doors to create easy access for passengers to the vehicle. The ve-year testing program included 5,000 virtual collisions along with 40 real-life, full-vehicle crashes, and another 100 tests where the car was mounted on a sled and red into a barrier. It took three years to hone the rear-door safety and the testing process also included the construction of a bespoke rig system used to test the reinforced latches supplied with the car. B-MAX doors are tted with ultra-highstrength steel brackets called crash catchers, which lock the doors together if the vehicle is hit in the side. Ford safety project manager Tom Overington says, The latches and crash catchers are crucial because they are designed to keep the doors together during a crash. We performed virtual car-to-car crashes at a 30 angle into the front and rear doors to further validate the performance of the door structure. We also built a special rig to test the reinforced latch mechanism. The forces involved in these tests are massive.
change it without going through the regulatory process of their governments, says Kenner. The Chinese government, as Im sure you are aware, is planning on making a whole series of changes between now and 2016, and Euro NCAP is making changes. So, we are facing that proliferation of requirements and lack of convergence or harmonization of the requirements. If the test protocols have different requirements for test dummies, test speeds, test setups, and different acceptance criteria, it then drives us to build more prototype vehicles to test, and there are also differences in how you certify, whether its a thirdparty witness authority versus self-certication like we have here in the United States. So we have to build more vehicles, have more engineers to follow up, and we have to engineer for more modes. Proliferation drives workload and cost of business relative to the markets that we serve. Does Kenner favor any sort of hiatus on further crashtesting standards and limits? If you look at the latest trafc fatalities data, for 2010, there were slightly under 33,000 highway fatalities. Thats the lowest absolute number in about 60 years, and it represents about 25% improvement over 2005. In that respect, you can say that weve made great progress. However, its still 33,000 and thats just an unacceptable toll. Its hard to argue with his analysis.
He adds that there will certainly be ongoing work on the crash performance of vehicles, but also a greater focus on active safety, accident prevention, and things like vehicle-to-vehicle communication and vehicle-toinfrastructure communication. He says that Ford has taken a leading position in terms of offering driverassist systems such as lane departure warning and correction, forward collision alert systems, brake-assist through system preloading, stability control, and rollover mitigation. Were interested in a holistic view of safety. Were interested in drive behavior, because in some cases we can help the driver with a warning that he previously couldnt have had. We also support primary seatbelt laws, because seatbelts are still the primary, number one piece of safety equipment we provide. The data is very, very clear between states that have primary seatbelt laws and those that dont. Were interested in infrastructure. The design of roads. The design of intersections. In Europe, they plan for pedestrians and bicycles, whereas here we didnt plan well for that in our infrastructure. We try to focus on preventing the accident from happening by giving the driver some assists in recognizing that they are going to be involved in an accident if they dont apply the brakes, or turn the steering wheel. In our
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INTERVIEW
Tools of the trade
Wayne Bahr says the tools that Ford uses every day continue to evolve, and that Fords collaboration with its software suppliers continues to improve predictive capability and better modeling. The things that we struggle with, the things that are hard to predict, such as glass breakage or weld failure, continue to improve as we go along. The second piece, the facility equipment, like the servo sled, continues to improve for better predictive capability against the barrier. We have added pitch and drop capability, as an example. The third piece is new equipment for new regulations that are coming onboard, such as the TRL leg that replaces the flex leg for the pedestrian protection regulations. The TRL leg has many more moving pieces, so its more realistic in terms of human behavior to meet the GTR 9 requirement, whereas the flex leg simply measured knee shear. The same advancements that are happening with dummies are happening with pedestrian protection. We have to keep up with new regulations such as FMVSS 226 for ejection mitigation. Weve had to purchase new capital equipment to meet the new phase-in requirements. We have our traditional improvements, such as those in the CAE world, our new sled capability, and our new equipment, to meet the new requirements.
We can set up a video conference or put an expert on a plane to help solve the issue. Sometimes, you just need eyes and ears on the ground
Wayne Bahr, global chief safety engineer, body engineering, Ford
forward collision warning, you get both an audible warning as well as a heads-up display that warns you that, if you dont take action, there is trouble ahead. We pre-charge the brakes, and if you dont heed the warnings, we try to give you some steering assist as well to keep you in the lane. The next step is that there are some things that the sensors cannot see. If youre cresting a hill, and you cant see the other car coming because of the curve in the road, theres the possibility of car-to-car communication in blind spots, at intersections, or in suddenly stopped traffic. The idea is to give the driver as much information as possible to help him prevent the accident in the first place. This is the next level, a level that requires cooperation and communication between vehicles, or between vehicles and infrastructure. Its pretty exciting to see this continue developing. Kenner notes that automotive safety standards and regulations experts generally meet in Geneva about three times a year to discuss harmonization of regulations and create global technical regulations or GTRs, but that more could be done. We are striving toward harmonization of regulations, but let me talk about that in two different categories. Existing requirements, first. Where there are differences between, say, the USA, Europe, and Canada, its a big challenge because of different infrastructure and history to harmonize requirements. What we would advocate, though, is that people would accept either the USA or Europe rather than trying to make them harmonize. However, in the realm of new requirements such as pedestrian protection, we are trying to push for harmonization of future regulation because then we can all use the same dummies, the same test equipment, and so forth. He says its a difficult and lengthy process. Asked about the push-pull between marketing low emissions and marketing safety to the public, Kenner says that Ford continues to operate on the four pillars of green, smart, safe, and quality. All four of those pillars are important to Ford Motor Company across the world, and our commitment to safety is consistent and unwavering.
Ford safety engineers in the USA and Germany crash tested the current Ford Focus more than 12,000 times in the real and virtual worlds
Our ability to focus on making our vehicles safer, and getting the tools and resources we need to do that, has not been compromised by the any of the other three pillars. Kenner says the next step beyond the current state-ofthe-art in prevention, protection, and active safety systems is the use of the connected vehicle and the potential number of ways technology can be used to sense what is happening from moment to moment to avoid an accident. He also mentions a continuing problem with alcohol, citing statistics that show that some 46% of pedestrian fatalities involve the use of alcohol by either the pedestrian or the driver, and points to progress in the detection of pedestrians. Weve done a lot of things to make the vehicle more friendly in the event of a pedestrian collision, but there is a new focus on detecting and avoiding the pedestrian, as in the Euro NCAP protocols, and on making the vehicle even softer.
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SEPTEMBER 2012
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SITE VISIT
Best of British
For more than 65 years, the Millbrook Proving Ground and MIRA have provided the motor industry with test facilities and engineering prowess. We visited the UK sites to find out what is driving business forward
WORDS BY JOHN OBRIEN
MIRAs rollover rig was designed by in-house engineers
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SEPTEMBER 2012
SITE VISIT
The majority of our facilities have been developed in-house because we understand the standards and we know what we need to get out of it
Lee Thompson, business development manager, safety engineering, MIRA
The two main commercially available crash testing sites within the UK are the proving grounds of MIRA and Millbrook, each of which caters for all types of vehicle, from passenger car to HGV via specialist military applications. They also offer bespoke packages to clients, from aiding development to evaluating and testing completed systems. But as the global influence ever shifts toward the BRIC nations, just how are the UK sites reacting to market demands? MIRA is an extensive site nestled within the UKs Midlands. Originally set up as a governmental department some 65 years ago, the site has evolved to cater for the demands of the time. From a crash test point of view, the site is able to recreate scenarios to meet a variety of legislative tests, from Euro NCAP through to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) and beyond. As Lee Thompson, business development manager, safety engineering at MIRA, explains, We can do pretty much anything. The current sprawling mass of buildings and laboratories at the site houses a variety of facilities and test equipment, but MIRA is being particularly vocal over its latest addition to the site the non-destructive rollover rig, which mimics the event of a vehicle overturning. Previous iterations of this test have been purely destructive, with the car unable to be used again afterwards, proving costly and uneconomical. This new type of device, however, is believed to be the only one in private use throughout Europe. The non-regulatory rollover test has been driven by both OEMs and market demands too, specifically the litigious US culture. But Thompson believes that is not necessarily a bad thing. What starts in the USA as litigation issue, follows course across to Europe and beyond, he explains.
SEPTEMBER 2012
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The rig itself is one of many facilities developed inhouse by MIRA. The actual metalwork was commissioned out to an external fabricator, but the rest of it was all commissioned in-house, states Thompson. The majority of our facilities have been developed in-house because we understand the standards and we know what we need to get out of it. We can often see that if you buy an off-theshelf product, there might be limitations to it, even if those limitations are specific to MIRA and our wants. But in this case, we made it ourselves because we were after a unique product and we are very fortunate that here we have a full array of capabilities, from designers and engineers, he continues. So designing a test rig, when you have the input of expert engineers, is doable and a good use of our engineering resource. Other plus-points of this new facility are that it can be used across various testing scenarios. In the wider context of the rig, explains Thompson, it can be used up to high g levels and speeds. On a practical level, this allows for development of airbag systems and other onboard safety devices for sports cars or other vehicles with a low center of gravity. We can incline the rig so we know it will roll, says Thompson. The problem with sports cars is that they are difficult to roll thanks to their very nature, and you will get to the point where they are damaging wheels and suspension components before they go. This way, we can use it not in a development sense, but to validate that when the vehicle is rolling, the onboard systems will work. As crash testing turns more and more to computeraided engineering (CAE) to provide repeatable, costeffective testing, why has MIRA turned to a physical test scenario?
Tata Nano being crash tested at MIRA (ABOVE); airbag development test at Millbrook (BELOW)
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Truthfully, as good as CAE/FE models are, they dont stack up to a physical model, explains Thompson. When having to manage an impact situation the software is up to the task, as is software that models suspension movement and how that works. But in combining them, there is nothing out there that can combine the two with the level of accuracy required. Meanwhile at Millbrook, full-scale crash testing is conducted using an overground rail. Outwardly this looks crude and very simple, in the words of Matt Hillam, manager, crash test engineering. But the big gains for us are that it is cost-effective, its easier to use, and its flexible we can move it around to suit us as there is no need for pre-determined release points set in the floor. However, the biggest advantage that Millbrooks setup offers is in its accuracy. Because the toe and guide rail runs overground, rather than submersed like other systems, it enables the guide rail to run right to the point of impact. If you have an underground rail, it will usually stop at the back of the camera pit, explains Hillam. So the car will run with no guidance for two or three meters, which is a lot of opportunity for deviation. With ours, we can run it over the camera pit. Yes, there is a slight compromise with the camera, but when you offer OEMs the opportunity for increased precision against a slight impairment of the camera, they are going to choose the deviation every time. This full-scale crash facility is currently running at seven to eight tests per week. There is always the scope to add more, says Hillam. The extensive dummy room at Millbrook houses around 50 dummies, ranging from individual component impacters, through 50th percentile females weighing around 55kg, to the 95th percentile male. We also have specific dummies for specific challenges, such as side impact, explains Hillam. These are biofidelic fore/aft dummies so they only work in a frontal crash. Put them in a side impact and they dont perform so well. Millbrook also offers a variety of third-party services to clients and other facilities. The certification of the dummies can be done here, explains Hillam. We do a lot of repair and maintenance work for other labs too. Each dummy has a quick once-over after every single test, before
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SITE VISIT SITE VISIT
Each dummy has a onceover after every single test. After 10 tests, it comes back in and gets pulled apart
Matt Hillam, manager, crash test engineering, Millbrook
it goes into the next test, but they typically run to 10 lives. So after 10 tests, it comes back in and gets pulled apart, and the various rigs (such as the pendulum rig) do the mechanical certification within the dummy. Items such as the accelerometer within the dummy are on a 12-month calibration too, and are also calibrated on site. Despite the tough global economical conditions, both Millbrook and MIRA assure us that theyve never been busier. Hillam states that Millbrook has seen plenty of quotes being issued to clients from the BRIC nations, while maintaining a steady business model for its existing customers. Over at MIRA, its optimistic outlook is reflected in an ambitious plan to provide a hub for global OEMs, suppliers, and other specialist companies. The crux of the new development will be an 87.5-hectare business park that aims to gather a variety of businesses together in one location. The business parks development will see the biggest changes in MIRAs 65-year history. All the current facilities will be levelled before being relocated in a closer proximity to the test circuit. As part of this 300 million investment, new buildings will house similar crash test facilities to those already used at the site. For as Thompson notes, There will always be a place for physical testing. CAE has its place, but we will not place any greater importance on it when the redesign occurs.
ABOVE: Test buck on Millbrooks HyGe sled RIGHT: MIRAs future, the new, 87.5-hectare business park
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COMPOSITES
Carbon footprint
Road cars are moving ahead of their racing counterparts in many areas of composite technology, but carbon crash structures have yet to make the jump from track to street
WORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS
In 1981, the McLaren MP4-1 became the rst complete carbon-ber composite racer to compete in the Formula 1 World Championship. Skeptics were quickly won over, rst by the cars speed, and then by its safety. Following John Watsons high-speed crash through the Lesmo curves at the 1981 Monza GP, the rest of the grid was quick to play catch-up. The following three decades have seen composites and motorsport develop a symbiotic relationship that has advanced both industries, with speed and safety remaining
the key drivers. Now, in an era of carbon-ber airliners and the 2013 launch of BMW i3 and i8 touted as the moment when composite structures will truly cross into the automotive mainstream, it seems that motorsport is no longer at the cutting edge of composite material development. Whats happening in automotive is similar to what weve seen in aerospace, says Paolo Feraboli, a research associate professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Washington, and the
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Lamborghini built the Sesto Elemento (Sixth Element) as a showcase for whats possible with carbon-ber structures
director of the Automobili Lamborghini Advanced Composite Structures Laboratory (ACSL). Originally, the innovations were for military aircraft the F-22, B-2, and the like. Times have changed, economies have changed, and the technology has matured. Now the innovations come from the commercial side of aviation. Similarly for automotive, where originally motorsport was the driver for innovation because of cost, production methods, and so on, now the real innovation is coming from mainstream passenger vehicles and/or high-end cars such as Lamborghini.
Road cars are leading the way when it comes to composite process and production breakthroughs, as already witnessed by developments such as Mubea Carbo Techs industrialized tooling for the McLaren MP4-12Cs carbon tub, or, more dramatically, the opening of the factory in Moses Lake, Washington, USA, thats a joint venture between SGL and BMW Group. This US$100 million facility is churning out raw material solely for use in carbon-ber reinforced plastics (CFRP) in the forthcoming BMW i3 and i8 road cars.
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Case study: Lamborghini Aventador
The rst road car to emerge from Lamborghinis collaboration with Boeing and the University of Washington is the Aventador supercar, which hit the market in 2011, and features a carbon- ber monocoque. The ACSL laboratory and other facilities around the world mean that we are now able to simulate the crash behavior of the carbon ber material based on technology that is really unique and used only in the aeronautical eld, explains Maurizio Reggiani, Lamborghinis director of R&D. We use a building-block approach. To simulate the monocoque of the Aventador we probably built around 10,000 coupons of different materials, different technologies, in order to simulate, part by part, every single item. This is the knowledge that we at Lamborghini have built, and now we have the capability to predict the dynamic behavior of every single element of the carbon ber [structure]. With the laboratory and the partnership with Boeing, we can say that we are the leader in this kind of simulation of carbon ber material. Reggiani adds that PAMCrash simulation software is used by the company, along with a package developed by Boeing itself. The stumbling block is not the availability of suitable software, however, its the need for reliable and comprehensive material characteristic data.Being able to simulate something that is not linear like metal is, depends on different kinds of issues, not only the angle of the ber, but also the kind of resin, the kind of geometry you use, the kind of technology that you use to produce the material, he says. In one place you might have braiding technology; in another, pre-preg with braiding inside; in another, RTM-Lambo [the companys patented resin transfer molding process]. Only by building the characterization of the material, part by part, joining it together and re-simulating it, are you able to simulate all these different technologies. And every time you run a simulation you must also make a physical test to prove that what you have simulated is in line with what you have predicted. This starts from a small piece and you get bigger and bigger 1,000 of this piece, 2,000 of this piece. Then you make this piece with another technology, you re-simulate it, and you test it. And only once you have this database of knowledge can you make a total simulation of a chassis in terms of crash behavior, in terms of side pole impacts, in terms of rolling of the chassis otherwise it is guesswork. And I can say that [for Aventador], when we did the crash homologation, we were able to achieve 100% alignment between the simulation and the real crash. Reggiani estimates that his engineering team carried out six or seven physical crashes and around 100 full-car simulations during the Aventadors development.
But as pioneering as BMWs newcomers will be, not even these models will employ carbon-ber crash structures front and rear; aluminum will be used instead as part of the Drive module, with the CFRP Life module forming the passenger cell. Of the four road cars that currently boast a carbon-ber monocoque (MP4-12C, Lamborghini Aventador, Bugatti Veyron, and Lexus LF-A), only one of them (the Lexus) has some of its crash structure made of carbon. Motorsport thus remains ahead of mainstream automotive in predicting the crash behavior of carbon ber, with Engenuitys crush-test rig for characterizing composite material behavior and C-Zone crush-prediction software among the products at the forefront of this eld. The noses on several 2012 F1 cars are, on the face of it, less amenable to good crash performance [than previous designs], so to be able to get those to crash successfully is a major achievement, observes Graham Barnes, Engenuitys managing director, who adds that C-Zone, licensed through Simulia, is used by several F1 teams. Thats what the software is there for to be able to analyze complex structures, enabling the aerodynamicists to have their way without needing to [physically] prototype lots of designs.
ABOVE: The recent Lamborghini Aventador features a carbon occupant cell, but combines this with an aluminum crash section
Theres no doubt that the simulation of composite material behavior, though still an emerging art, has advanced rapidly in the past decade. Phil Hall, boss of Caterham Composites, points to the pre-manufacturing area as being particularly robust, but still has reservations about predicting composite crash behavior. I personally think we are not at a stage were you could iterate to a result at a rate that the auto industry would
Times have changed, and the technology has matured. Now innovation comes from the commercial side of the aviation and automotive industries
Paolo Feraboli, research associate professor, department of aeronautics and astronautics, University of Washington
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require, he says. In motor racing there is a very quick turnaround on components, so we can iterate and retest again very quickly. In an automotive scenario, with a whole car to crash and the associated costs, you dont want to be doing three to four tests on a full car to prove out your pre-simulation. Different software companies have come up with some ingenious codes to try to solve that problem. But to my knowledge, at present, there isnt one that you could put your hand on heart and say, Yes, that will give us the result we need out of the box. The uncertainty, Hall feels, lies particularly in the complexity of a dynamic crash scenario. Linear, static-wise, the simulation is very reliable and repeatable. Dynamic crash-wise, its still very much open and thats largely down to two things: one, the materials database and material properties arent readily available and therefore youd have to undergo a series of material characterization tests to get the information you need; and two, the mechanisms of failure in a dynamic crash are still very complex, with many variables. So depending on resin, impact speeds, strain rate dependencies, and so forth, the combination of all those mechanisms presents the ultimate performance of a dynamic impact. We have
BELOW: BMW i3s modular structure

Life module with CFRP passenger compartment
Body surfaces Aluminum-dominated Drive module
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developed tools based on more than 15 years of dynamic testing; we have a very broad knowledge of what does and doesnt work in a dynamic impact case. We can also substitute different bers and resins, and predict the behavior of them. But I think we are still some way off getting to the same level of prediction and simulation that can be achieved linear statically with composites, and with metals. Halls reticence is echoed in comments from Professor Feraboli, who notes that, even at the top end of the street car market, misconceptions about the crash performance of carbon ber persist. The behavior of composites in the eyes of customers and press is often erroneous, even though Formula 1 cars and the Boeing 787 use crash structures out of carbon. It doesnt matter the perceived behavior of carbon is that of a brittle material. Therefore we [Lamborghini] decided to stick with the central cell for the Aventador, and with the Sesto Elemento technology demonstrator, go forward and show that we can actually design a carbon-ber
ABOVE AND RIGHT: Engenuity crushtest coupons and the crush-test xture BELOW LEFT: fe-safe/Composites combines multicontinuum theory (MCT) with kinetic theory to predict fatigue life in composite structures
Fatigue prediction
Composites are intrinsically different from metals, says John Draper, CEO of fatigue specialist Safe Technology Ltd, who has worked with Firehole Composites on fe-safe/Composites, which help predict fatigue life in composite structures. The multiple constituents have unique material properties, which contribute separately to the load response. As such, even simple load states can lead to complex behavior in the individual constituents and the composite structure. Composites therefore require a different approach to structural analysis and simulation. Advanced, composite-specic analysis technologies enable optimized designs and minimize the need for over-design; the insight afforded enables engineers to fortify only where necessary. This is essential when weight and material costs are of prime importance.
crash structure, as well as other innovations such as the carbon-ber suspension, to help prepare the public for the future. However, theres no reason to suggest that such a state wont be achieved within a few years, with the might of mainstream automotive likely to help push the technology forward. For as Feraboli observes, With rigorous approaches it is possible to certify an airplane for crash, so it must be possible to certify everything else. It could yet be the case that knowledge gained in motorsport helps bridge the gap to the automotive mainstream, particularly given the unique nature of composite materials. If you look at F1 in particular, the wealth of experience in designing, engineering, and testing very, very advanced composite structures is commonplace, notes Caterhams Hall. Industries such as automotive come from a metal stamping background. People tend to start off with a metal structure and just replace the material, without a great deal of thought to the underlying, rst-principles geometry. And therefore the composites dont function to the maximum potential of their strengths. So it needs that transfer of technology and knowledge. In the short term, there will be no substitute for materials characterization tests. Automotive OEMs looking to take composites into the mainstream should note that Lamborghini crushed some 10,000 material coupons in building the database that underpinned the development of the Aventadors composite monocoque. You still need to build the materials database do the work in the background to understand how the materials are working, then select the best materials to go forward, urges Engenuitys Graham Barnes. Now is the time to build the understanding, so that when you do need to deploy it, youre ready. Additional reporting by John OBrien
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UNIVERSITY FOCUS
On a roll
Current research projects at the National Crash Analysis Center at George Washington University could lead to more repeatable rollover testing and better frontal crash safety
WORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS
When a Hyundai-Kia-funded investigation into injuries from small-offset frontal impacts came to an end in 2010, researchers at the National Crash Analysis Center (NCAC), part of George Washington University in Washington DC, USA, decided that an interesting by-product of the data analyzed for the study merited further investigation. Since then, a small project team led by Rick Morgan, senior research scientist, has been examining the phenomenon of a frontal impact between the vehicles longitudinal rails. Such an event could be caused by an impact with a tree, post, or even an oblique impact with another vehicle. And although this scenario one of seven frontal crash classication groups identied by the researchers accounts for only 6% of all frontal crashes in the USA, the consequences are disproportionately severe due to the longitudinal rails not deforming axially to absorb energy, but bending outward instead, exposing the cabin to intrusion.
LEFT: Aftermath of the IIHS highspeed pole impact, one of three frontal crash tests analyzed by the NCAC team
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UNIVERSITY FOCUS
This image of a 2006MY Passat being crashed at IIHS shows the severity of the between-the-rails frontal crash scenario
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Meet the winners of the Automotive Testing Technology International Awards 2011
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GMs former chairman reveals how successful testing sometimes involves bending the rules
Euro 6
The 2014 regulations are fast approaching. Be prepared with the latest technology
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Korea guidance
New testing standards will mean a shake-up for OEMs in this important market
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Could Quebecs new crash test facility be the most accurate in the world?
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Mercedes-Benz develops an all-aluminum structure for its iconic SL roadster
Is CFD blowing away wind tunnels? Seven experts debate the future
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The junior exec against which all others are judged. The 2012 model features great advances
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To underpin its analysis, the team rst took data from the National Automotive Sampling System Crashworthiness Data System (NASS-CDS). The NCAC researchers then compared three full-scale, laboratory frontal impacts using the same make and model of car (the images here show a 2006MY Volkswagen Passat, which was chosen purely as a representative vehicle). To complete the tests, the NCAC communicated frequently with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in nearby Virginia, and examined the IIHS full-vehicle crashes in detail. Thus the data collected from an NCAP rigid barrier test at 56km/h, an IIHS 40% offset frontal crash at 64km/h, and an IIHS high-speed pole impact between the longitudinal rails, at 64km/h, could be examined. As one might expect from the increased cabin intrusion into the Passat, the front-center pole impact increases the risk of injury to the driver, but the surprise is by just how much. Morgans team puts the probability of a head injury at 10% (versus 1% or less for the rigid barrier and 40%-offset impacts). Right-foot injury probability is a sizeable 34%, compared with a next-worst gure of 11% for the rigid-barrier impact. The numbers are considerably worse for the passenger-side occupant in a between-therails accident, too. I think the entire safety community should discuss what we need to do for frontal crashes going into the future, 2015, and beyond, says Morgan. The IIHS recently announced that it is adding the small-overlap frontal test and will recognize vehicles that excel in the test from 2013 onward, but we think the impact between the rails is important as well and needs further research. If we look at the accumulated injury data from our research, the crashes we should be looking at, because of the frequency at which they occur, are still the fullengagement and the 40%-offset, he explains. These are also the two scenarios in which the auto companies have done a fantastic job of decreasing serious injuries. In terms of the maximum abbreviated injury scale (MAIS) 2+F
Other avenues
Alongside the frontal-impact and rollover work described elsewhere, NCAC is home to numerous other crash safety research programs, with a particular focus on computer simulation and physical testing of both roadside barriers and security barriers. Detailed computer models of several vehicles have been completed. In December 2011, the center made a 1.5 million-element vehicle model of the 2010 MY Toyota Yaris (above), available for download via its website. Work on accurate tire and suspension models for these vehicles is ongoing.
The result of an NCAP rigid-barrier impact contrasts markedly with the between-therails impact result shown on page 42
I think the entire safety community should discuss what we need to do for frontal crashes going into the future, 2015, and beyond
Rick Morgan, senior research scientist, NCAC
(severity two through to fatalities), 2.9% of the serious to severe injuries are in a full engagement, and 2.5% are in an offset, so those are the two most important. But the next one on the list is the between-the-rails crash, with 0.8%. By comparison, the small offset, the one that is getting a test now, accounts for 0.2%. Thats not to trivialize the small-offset crashes in the real world, but based on the data, we feel that between-the-rails should be considered. Elsewhere at NCAC, research scientist Fadi Tahan, a PhD candidate, is working toward a dissertation in vehicle rollover. Recognizing the shortcomings of the existing methods of testing occupant protection in a realistic dynamic rollover situation in particular, the lack of repeatability and with the background of NHTSAs desire to update FMVSS 216 (Roof Crush Resistance) to incorporate a dynamic test protocol, he and his colleagues have spent several years investigating alternative methods, supported by NCAC and the Automotive Safety Research Institute. In early 2012, Tahan and research scientist colleague Shai Cohen designed a new dynamic rollover device called the Guided Rollover Propensity (GRP) and since then they have been rening the test device to enable a test vehicle to behave in a fashion similar to a real-life rollover, exposing the [dummy] occupant to realistic kinematics, loading the
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UNIVERSITY FOCUS
roof structure dynamically, and assessing the full- and partial ejection and injuries of the occupants. The concept, thus far developed in the digital environment, consists of a railed track that is maneuvered similar to a specic forward J-turn with a carrying cart. A decreasing radius as the cart corners is sufcient to roll most vehicles, and a tripping edge on the carrying cart eliminates the possibility of the vehicle slipping off prematurely. Such a setup would, Tahan believes, provide repeatable initial conditions for the rollover, and remove the inuence of contaminating vehicle and road characteristics such as tire properties or road-surface friction level. As a result, the test will involve only rolloverspecic properties of the vehicles for example, center of gravity, inertias, and suspension design. The performance of electronic stability control (ESC), a notable rollover risk-reducer, isnt included in the GRP test. However, Tahan argues that this test has two primary aims. The rst is to examine the mechanical tendency of a vehicle to roll (i.e. without the aid of ESC). The second is to establish how effectively the occupants are protected in a rollover situation, specically how well the vehicle structure resists intrusion, and how the various passive safety devices work together to keep the occupants
Some analysis results. CENTER shows the distribution of all frontal crashes; the chart RIGHT shows accumulated injury (Risk x Involvement)
Were continuing to work on the GRP as a research tool, improving the design and putting the concept out to the safety community for discussion
Fadi Tahan, research scientist, NCAC
The GRP currently exists only in digital form. The images show a generic vehicle and cart for the proposed device
contained safely inside the vehicle. All these features are required when the ESC does not prevent a rollover. As a result, the absence of ESC involvement does not undermine the test, he says. I think the GRP has very good potential, assesses Tahan, whos actively seeking funding to support the construction of a full-size working model of his test device. The occupant motion is very similar to what happens in a real-world rollover. Weve shown government, manufacturers and safety organizations our initial analysis and they were interested to learn more about our dynamic rollover test device. Were continuing to work on it as a research tool, improving the design and putting the concept out to the safety community for discussion. We are gathering feedback that hopefully can be built into a physical model of the device. In the short term, Tahan and his colleagues plan to continue his work by rening the track path and nalizing the cart design.
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ServoSled Catapult Systems

Capacities: 3.1 MN, 2.0 MN, and 1.4 MN High accuracy and repeatability High frequency response Excellent low-g whiplash pulse capability Rapid tuning to a new pulse Inherent negative-g capability Dynamic Pitch Simulation Side-impact testing options Long-stroke, high-velocity tests Upgrade of Hyge-type systems to 1.4 MN ServoSled system
EuroNCAP Whiplash V2.9 P1 Low Severity Pulse
Payload - 1251 kg
Acceleration Target Test 1 Accel Test 2 Accel Test 3 Accel Pulse P1 T0 +.255 g limit Pulse P1 T0 -.255 g limit Pulse P1 accel slope high Pulse P1 accel slope low Pulse P1 accel plat top Pulse P1 accel plat bottom Pulse P1 accel 6 g limit 1 Pulse P1 accel 6 g limit 2 Pulse P1 accel 1 g limit Pulse P1 accel -1 g limit Pulse P1 Time "s" limit Pulse P1 Time "t" limit Velocity Target Test 1 Vel Test 2 Vel Test 3 Vel Low Corridor High Corridor
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25 20 15
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Payload -1180kg
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Acceleration Ta rget Te st 1 Acc- RMS Error: 1.89g's Te st 2 Acc- RMS Error: 1.13g's Velocity Ta rget Te st 1 Vel- RMS Error: 0.35 kph Te st 2 Vel- RMS Error: 0.28 kph
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Our products and services include: Full vehicle crash test systems Sled testing services ServoSled catapult sled systems Deceleration sleds Floodlighting systems Facility integration Please contact Seattle Safety for more information.
Velocity (kph)
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822 Third Ave. S., Kent, WA 98032 USA Tel 253-395-4321, Fax 253-981-0223 E-mail info@seattlesafety.com www.seattlesafety.com
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UDIES
www.ukipme.com/mag_crashtest.htm
EXPO PREVIEW
Event: Automotive Testing Expo North America 2012 Venue: The Suburban Collection Showplace, Novi, Michigan, USA Date: October 23-25, 2012
Its that time of year again! Automotive Testing Expo North America 2012, one of the worlds foremost vehicle development events, is fast approaching. As part of the exhibition at The Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Michigan, the Crash Test Zone will provide a place to meet with some of the worlds leading producers of the very latest technologies for improving occupant and pedestrian safety. Over the next four pages you will nd just a few highlights of what you can expect to see at this years event. Dont forget that there will also be a number of informative, crash-testrelevant presentations in the expos free-to-attend Open Technology Forum. We look forward to seeing you there in October!
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EXPO PREVIEW
Crash Test Zone
Compact LED onboard optics solution

The directive for greater auto safety has resulted in the development of complex, integrated vehicle systems. Side curtain airbag systems, more sophisticated belt restraint systems, and more complex interior designs, have led to the increased need to develop systems to record their performance in simulated and actual vehicle crash tests. To accomplish this, cameras must be located in areas that are difcult, or impossible, to illuminate using exterior lighting systems. Camera lighting systems need to be properly positioned to ensure sufcient, uniform illumination. EYE LIGHTING has developed a compact onboard LED lighting system to solve these demanding application problems. The new EYE Solarlux LED system uses proprietary LED optics and electronics tested during operation to 100g. This compact system requires much lower power to achieve the required illuminance level. The lower energy consumption and lower heat output protect against interior and test dummy heat-up. The high-intensity LED system delivers exceptional illumination at 5,000K CCT for natural sunlight simulation. The xture integrated 12V/24V LED electronics provide safe onboard operation from existing power sources for a very economical solution. An optional high-g battery power/distribution pack can be added to supply power for up to four Solarlux LED xtures.
VISIT BOOTH 7023
Data acquisition system

DTS is presenting its TSR PRO-HB, a data recorder with a built-in, 3-axis accelerometer for SAE/ISO Class 1000 data collection on moving deformable barriers (MDBs), sled/catapults, and crash vehicles. This complete standalone data acquisition system includes a microprocessor, battery, memory, ADC, signal conditioning, and three internal 500g accelerometers. It is capable of sampling at 20ksps/channel, 16-bit resolution with 4-pole Butterworth 1,650Hz anti-alias ltering, and up to four hours of recording (1GB ash memory). The TSR PRO-HB works in continuous recorder or transient capture mode for unattended monitoring. It can be armed and ready to
record in minutes and left unattended for hours or days before the actual test is performed, perfect for permanent mounting on sleds and MDBs. Triggering is either via programmable XYZ trigger thresholds, or a contact closure (tape switch or other).
NASCAR runs a TSR in every National Touring Series car during each race. For similar operation in higher shock environments such as blast testing, and the addition of angular rate sensors, see the DTS TSR 6DXP.
VISIT BOOTH C132
Crash Test Technology International SEPTEMBER 2012
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EXPO PREVIEW
Safety test solution collaboration

MICROSYS TECHNOLOGIES INC, a supplier of airbag test systems, and CONCEPT TECH GMBH, are joining forces to provide the market with a fully integrated safety test solution for impactor and airbag testing. This enables customers to increase their level of productivity, while improving the quality of their test data. Philipp Tlke, co-CEO at Concept, says, By combining our work efforts with Microsys, we can introduce Concepts products directly to the large Microsys installation base. Christoph Knotz, co-CEO at Concept, adds, Concept is very pleased to be able to include Microsys within the Concept family of companies so soon after
Unique facilities
Exhibitor TASS is a supplier specializing in safety, vehicle dynamics, and powertrain solutions. With more than 80 years of experience, TASS provides excellent test facilities, unique engineering methodologies, and high-value engineering solutions. Passive safety applications are key to TASS. As a pioneer in the development of current anthropomorphic test devices, the company continues to break new ground in active and integrated safety applications and solutions. This work is further enhanced by the companys test facilities for cooperative driving. With the only dedicated connected highway and intercity network in Europe, TASS has developed a foundation for the development of controls for active and cooperative systems. Whether it is enhancing the ride and comfort of a new vehicle, or trying to reduce the cost of an electronic stability control system, TASS is the ideal partner.
VISIT BOOTH C104
State-of-the-art shock-testing software
opening our new test lab in Augsburg, Germany. Customers of both Concept and Microsys will benet from the combination of expertise and products we can now offer throughout the world. We are planning to install a Microsys SureFire system in Augsburg so that customers can see for themselves how the combination of both companies products will provide a superior experience for the automotive safety test lab.
VISIT BOOTH C128
Sled pitching system

Visit the SEATTLE SAFETY stand to nd out about the correlation trials of its new sled pitching system with OEMs. The system simulates vehicle pitching as seen in barrier test crashes, and creates a preset sled trajectory prior to conducting the dynamic test. An onboard pitching platform is installed onto the standard sled, to which the vehicle test buck is attached. As the sled is triggered and accelerated by the ServoSled propulsion system, the pitching platform and test buck is guided through an offboard support system to precisely replicate the vehicle pitch motion. The intended vehicle pitch prole is determined from photometrical analysis of a barrier crash test video. The data obtained from this analysis is used as input into Seattle Safety software to establish the pitch prole used during sled testing. The system is designed to be modular in nature and can be installed or removed within 60 minutes. It is available for new ServoSled installations or as an upgrade to existing ServoSled laboratories.
VISIT BOOTH C134
HYGE shock-testing equipment was developed more than ve decades ago using a metering pin technology that was capable of producing pulses far exceeding the requirements of the time. Hyge technology has been associated with the simplistic pulse thats been used for decades, but as test requirements have become more complex, so have the expo exhibitors capabilities. The company has developed software to enable operators to predict and develop pulses to better utilize Hyges capabilities. This software displays the operating parameters, allowing the operator to adjust and review results
to optimize pin and pulse shape. Then it provides proles to machine pins or assemble pins using a sectional pin for actual testing. The modular pin design enables the operator to ne-tune a pulse as required by simply replacing a section relative to the area of the pulse they want to adjust. Hyges rened software program, used in combination with the modular metering pin accessory, puts the power to design or modify a pulse at the operators ngertips. Hyges simulations are reproducible, inexpensive to maintain, and have a long life/usage expectancy.
VISIT BOOTH C116
Motion analysis software showcased at the expo

Expo exhibitor IMAGE SYSTEMS is presenting its TEMA motion analysis software, which has been used in most major crash-testing facilities. The capabilities include 2D analysis with depth scaling in conjunction with parallel or angled planes, 3D analysis, and six-degrees-of-freedom analysis. There is also airbag outline analysis with one camera, and volume analysis with multiple cameras. The wand lens calibration system makes lens calibration very quick, with minimum operator interaction other than waving the wand; no survey is needed. More importantly, this calibration is extremely accurate. Using the template system and report generator, the nal report is prepared ready for printing, while the tracking is in process. When the tracking is done, the report is ready. Image Systems camera control software has also been developed to totally automate the imaging activities in a crash-test environment, starting with camera setup controlled from the test-planning database, through to automatic distribution of the images to multiple destinations in multiple formats. Operator involvement is primarily to check for good images and to give permission to go ahead with the test. Visitors may pick up a demonstration copy of the program and training videos at the booth.
VISIT BOOTH C126
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EXPO PREVIEW
New high-speed camera range

Expo exhibitor VISION RESEARCH is offering its new line of Phantom Miro M-Series digital high-speed cameras. These exible, easy-to-use cameras contain all the high-performance features that science, engineering, and research professionals expect, in a compact, simple design. Vision Research designed the Phantom Miro M-Series cameras with exibility, versatility, and accessibility in mind. The 1-megapixel Miro M110 and M310 include a Vision Research custom-designed 1,280 x 800 CMOS sensor, with a widescreen format that enables users to keep objects in the frame longer and see more of the event
New name, same expertise

THE COOKE CORPORATION is now under its new name, PCO-TECH INC, better reecting the companys relationship with PCO AG of Kelheim, Germany. PCO-Tech Inc was founded in 1986 (as The Cooke Corporation), and will continue to specialize in highspeed imaging and lighting systems, high-performance CCD and CMOS imaging systems, optical non-contact measuring and monitoring instrumentation, and NIST traceable light measurement instrumentation and services. PCO-Tech will also continue to operate under its current structure, with the same knowledgeable personnel, ensuring the same responsive service and dedication to excellence. Email addresses within the company have changed, but contacts remain the same. PCO-Tech Inc appreciates its customers and looks forward to assisting in future imaging requirements. More information on PCOTechs high-speed and high-performance CCD, ICCD, CMOS, and sCMOS camera systems will be in Novi.
VISIT BOOTH 5036
they are recording. Both models feature high light sensitivity and good dynamic range for superior low-light images, which are often a problem with high-speed imaging. Rick Robinson, division VP marketing at Vision Research says, With the
ability to capture high-quality images at the most common resolutions and speeds, these new cameras address the broad range of applications that professionals need to meet their requirements.
VISIT BOOTH C130
Fast cameras
High-denition LEDs and plasma lighting

LUMINYS offers a range of very high intensity LEDs and plasma lights. Visit the companys stand at the Expo to nd out about its optics, which are tuned specically for airbag testing, as well as other lab cell high-speed image capture tests, providing unparalleled image quality at extremely high camera speeds. LED development has produced new products from 600W to 12,000W. Luminys enhanced testing, where it is critical to see, for example, the way the folds of an airbag open up as the airbag deploys. Because the rapid movement of airbags demands that they be shot at very high frame rates of 3,000-6,000fps (and sometimes higher), not only are high light levels necessary, but high-quality light color characteristics become extremely important as well.
VISIT BOOTH C108
NAC IMAGE TECHNOLOGY is promoting the expansion of its Memrecam HX camera platform at the expo, introducing its all-new Memrecam HX-6. The Memrecam HX-6 offers full HD resolution, 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, at 2,250 frames per second, and also offers an astounding 5 megapixel resolution, 2,560 x 1,920 pixels, at 1,000 fps. The Memrecam HX-6 also employs NACs proprietary GX-Circuit, enabling the HX-6 to achieve light sensitivity ISO ratings of 10,000 and 40,000 for color and monochrome models, respectively. It is ideal for use in offboard automotive crash test applications, airbag deployment applications, and a multitude of other high-end research applications. The HX-6 offers both high spatial resolution and high framing rate capabilities.
VISIT BOOTH C100
spectrum plasma lamps provide excellent color quality characteristics and perfect kelvin match to modern CMOS cameras see the photo above, which illustrates the same lamp
technology that Luminys uses for its high-intensity automotive testing light xtures. Vibrant colors and extremely clear detail are evident. This is excellent for automotive crash
Who to meet:
TASS AMERICAS Booth C104
Crash test barriers for auto safety testing

PLASCORE, INC manufactures and supplies crash test barriers to the worldwide automotive industry. These made-tospec vehicle crash barriers are used by automobile manufacturers, safety and testing agencies, and numerous government institutes throughout the world. The performance is intended to provide a measurement tool with sufcient precision to ensure repetitive and correlative results that reect the protective IIHS specications. Manufacturing is conducted under ISO 9001 standards for the highest quality and consistency and the barriers are available from distribution locations worldwide. Paint nishes include grey or blue anti-reective paint as standard, but custom nishes are also available. The range includes the NHTSA 214 Moving Deformable Barrier and the IIHS Side Impact Barrier.
VISIT BOOTH C124
TONY BROMWELL managing director
JEFF BLACKBURN sales manager
performance of a motor vehicle with respect to human occupants. Plascore frontal and side impact crash test barriers are manufactured to industry standards, including ECE, NHTSA and
Crash Test Technology International SEPTEMBER 2012
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SUPPLIER INTERVIEW
Perfect harmony
WORDS BY LIN PAN
Its been a challenging few years for Humanetics, but with the introduction of new crash test equipment to come and new software models, the company is more condent than ever of continued success
Humanetics Innovative Solutions Inc specializes in the design and manufacture of sophisticated anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs), commonly known as crash test dummies. It offers regulated and non-regulated ATDs, ranging in size from newborn infants to large adults, that are used in the automotive, military, and aerospace industries. The company also specializes in the development and supply of Finite Element software dummy models for computerized virtual crash test simulations. With the inux and constant change of the marketplace, there are continuous demands on Humanetics to develop the latest technology. According to Christopher OConnor, president and CEO of Humanetics, there is no better time for such a challenge. OConnor has pioneered a signicant corporate turnaround in preparing Humanetics for its
future. He was quizzed about his recent success and planned future perspective for Humanetics. What has been the biggest challenge for Humanetics during the past two years? Transforming two nancially challenged companies with different corporate cultures into a single, harmonious, and efcient company with a new common identity has been an exciting opportunity. During the past two years, Humanetics has reduced its cost structure by millions of dollars, while consolidating manufacturing facilities, expanding customer service globally, developing common manufacturing processes and procedures, expanding engineering and product development, introducing program management initiatives, and adding new manufacturing equipment in our continued effort to improve customer service.
How did you succeed in your corporate expectations during the past two years? We have made signicant accomplishments during the past two years and have exceeded our short-term goals. We have achieved a nancially stable and healthy company to support the development and advancement of crash test dummies, for an indenite future. However, we still have more work ahead of us in order to achieve our long-term goals and support our quest for continuous process improvement and improved delivery to ultimately provide the best customer service. Humanetics will continue to advance the improvement of our operational performance and customer support. Tell me about your top corporate goals driving corporate growth? Our mission is to increase our global leadership in occupant safety test and measurement
for the development of safer vehicles, ultimately saving lives. Our primary goals supporting our mission include: continuous improvement and innovation; invent the next generation of test and measurement products; reduce performance variability; exceed customer expectations; attract and develop exceptional people; and achieve supply chain and manufacturing excellence. What new products are being developed by Humanetics that we could expect to see in the next few years? Humanetics currently has more new products in development than at any other time in its history. In fact, we have more new test devices than all cumulative historical products previously developed. For automotive applications, we are developing new test products for rear impact, side impact, frontal impact, pedestrian leg and child crash test dummies, and related
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SUPPLIER INTERVIEW
equipment. We have introduced new virtual Finite Element crash test dummy software models. In addition, we are excited to be developing a new blast dummy with the US Army for the improvement of warrior survivability. Extending our expertise to help save lives for our soldiers deployed worldwide is exciting and rewarding. How do you actively collaborate with your customers? Humanetics is an integral participant in numerous worldwide technical committees, which includes our customers, industry regulators, and safety suppliers advancing crash test equipment. During the past year, Humanetics has participated in the Harmonization Committee meetings with the strategic goal of reducing variability within crash test dummies. This committee was led by Jack Jensen at General Motors and had active international membership from Ford,
Chrysler, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Honda, BMW, and Porsche; plus industry groups such as IIHS, JAMA, and ACEA; and US and European regulators. We are currently building the rst Harmonized Dummies to support the request of this committee that will help reduce variability and save costs for our safety customers worldwide. With a 60-plus year history, tell me why your employees have stayed with Humanetics for so long? Consistent with our customers and industry colleagues, our employees pride themselves on the impact they can make as part of the process that ultimately saves lives. Coming to work every day knowing that our products help make a difference in reducing injuries and saving lives is a unique pleasure we all share in the safety industry. The ultimate goal of Humanetics is to save lives and I strive to achieve that vision by encouraging my team of employees to understand
and embrace the responsibility and social accountability that comes with their day-today accomplishments. Also, product development in the safety industry is often a long road that can require decades of dedication, focus, and sheer diligence. Thats why we have employees with more than 40 years of service! Where do you see Humanetics in ve years in this evolving marketplace? As the technology grows and the devices become more complex, our company will be more reliant on advanced technology. The skills set of the company and the employees has continued to grow and become more dynamic. The virtual world of crash test modeling will continue to expand and correlate greater with real-world results, allowing our customers to increase their own design efciency and decrease the length of their vehicle and safety system development
cycles. Humanetics is an integral part of this process and we can never be a static business disconnected from our clients; we must always continue to evolve the cherished partnership we have in the safety industry. I understand that you recently won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for 2012; can you tell me about that award? Yes, receiving the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 Award was very satisfying and is a great testament of the hard work and signicant accomplishments that all our employees at Humanetics worldwide have achieved during the past year. The award recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who demonstrate excellence and extraordinary success in such areas as innovation, nancial performance, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities, so it was a great honor to win.
SEPTEMBER 2012
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Image and test data analysis

Ormes new combined software package can analyze high-speed videos of a crash, while also merging results with all other data acquired from sensors, and producing a report all at once
Announcing a new release of TrackImage and TrackReport, the well-known software suite for image and data analysis, Orme is going one step further into automatic data analysis and reporting with an all-in-one software tool. The key feature of this new approach is the convergence between the two tools, TrackImage and TrackReport. While TrackImage analyzes all high-speed videos of the crash, TrackReport can merge these tracking results with all other data acquired from sensors, computes all biomechanical criteria, and generates the report at once. This process is now dramatically improved, as the convergence between TrackImage and TrackReport allows a complete, smooth process to deal with the huge amount of data, from importing the raw data to the full diagnostic of the test and the various exports of results. Due to the automatic timesynchronization of videos with cursors on the curves, the smart data visualization makes the analysis easy and the report interactive. Ormes new TrackImage 3.0 comes with a completely new interface. More efficient and more interactive, it also remains intuitive and smooth, with robust algorithms to track any kind of target or point in 2D and 3D. Whole object deformation tracking and airbag deployment analysis are two other modules available to
SEPTEMBER 2012
Orme
Tel: +33 561 0025 70 Email: info@orme-toulouse.com Web: www.orme-toulouse.com
ONLINE READER ENQUIRY NUMBER
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crash-test users. TrackImage 3.0 also offers new calibration features such as perspective corrections, lens distortion corrections, and higher accuracy through a simplified automated camera calibration process. All the configurations of a test can now be saved, including target definitions, calibrations, and postprocessing, and can thus be re-used for each new test in a few clicks. Fully configurable predefined analysis templates allow post-processing and reports to be automatically generated, as TrackImage directly uses TrackReport to merge results from tracking and analysis of sensor data. Therefore TrackImage now has TrackReports powerful and versatile post-processing functionalities. Moreover, TrackImage now includes a new 3D
ABOVE: Orme TrackImage and TrackReport workow
tracking module, using the last up-to-date 3D tracking algorithms. Over three years of research activities at Orme, together with its partner, the French National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS), have led to the design of new, robust algorithms for 3D camera calibration and 3D tracking. One or several points can be tracked simultaneously from different viewpoints, and are automatically measured in 3D in any 3D spatial reference chosen by the user. TrackReport has also been updated with stronger post-processing capabilities, and displaying results coming from TrackImage to automatically generate reports. Thus, a new calculation library, specially designed for trajectory processing, with useful functions such as filtering, velocity, and
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reports, and export in various formats or to an ASAM-ODS database, without any further action from the user. Furthermore, new toolbars can be added in TrackReport to create new interactive functions, in order to manage or process data, with new dedicated new dialog boxes. From the simplest to the most complex management, post-processing, and visualization of data, TrackReport is able to give the suitable solution. Following a series of successes in France and Europe with TrackImage and TrackReport, Orme is now looking to expand more internationally. It recently entered the Chinese and Indian markets with the opening of new offices in Shanghai and Bangalore. It has two clients in China and hopes to capitalize on the countrys strong R&D investment. Fujian Benz (a joint venture between Daimler, Fujian Motor, and Taiwan China Motor) recently purchased TrackImage to measure seat deformations during the crash, and PSA in Shanghai already uses TrackReport for test analysis. India is a promising market for Orme, which has received positive feedback from some of the countrys key players.
acceleration computations, change of spatial reference, interpolations, has been added over the standard signal processing functions of TrackReport. The properties of graphical objects have also been improved to better represent and synchronize this tracking data with signals from sensors or from simulation results: trajectories and video animations, CAD import, and 3D representations. Moreover, TrackReport comes with a complete set of predefined templates for TrackImage data, which the user can directly use and adapt according to his needs. With long-time experience and expertise in the field of crash-test analysis, Orme offers a full service to TrackImage and TrackReport users. For instance, a complete library of predefined templates
ABOVE: 3D deformation automatic measurement with TrackImage and TrackReport
for all crash-test regulations, as well as the library of templates for all dummy calibration, is available. These templates enable crash analysts to efficiently analyze their tests, taking advantage of fully validated and up-to-date, but still customizable, reports. Orme can also develop, on demand, specific software applications, based on TrackReport, to automate any import, processing, or export of data and reports. TrackReport can also be fully integrated with the data acquisition chain of test benches, to automatically read and analyze data, produce
These templates enable crash analysts to efciently analyze their tests, taking advantage of fully validated and up-to-date, but still customizable, reports
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Evolution in crash safety

Looking back through the history of auto safety, how has Millbrook Proving Ground developed and grown with the times?
As Millbrook Proving Ground rapidly approaches its 5,000th crash test, Matthew Hillam, manager of crash test engineering, HyGe sled and safety systems at Millbrook, reminds us where it all began and explains how crash testing has evolved. Millbrook has been crash testing vehicles since the site opened in Bedfordshire in 1970. What started as one basic frontal crash test is now a suite of multiple tests, carried out to numerous legislative and manufacturer specications. During this time, the development of safety features, from seatbelts and airbags, to the way a car crumples on impact, has been inuenced by the testing and development carried out by Millbrooks experienced engineers. The rst crash test was conducted at Millbrook then known as the Vauxhall Safety Test Laboratory in March 1970. At that time, testing basically involved crashing a vehicle head on into a wall at 30mph and assessing the level of steering wheel displacement, which at that time was the biggest cause of death in collisions. Back then, it was an open-air site, consisting of just a runway, block, and lights. The rest of the facility has since been built around the original site, including a test hall, camera pits, prep hut, and covered runway. Millbrook uses a unique system for towing and guiding
SEPTEMBER 2012
Millbrook Proving Ground

Tel: +44 1525 404242 Email: info@millbrook.co.uk Web: www.millbrook.co.uk
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vehicles on its above-ground rail, which has consistently high accuracy compared with other systems. The tow and guide means vehicles are released closer to the point of impact, dramatically reducing the amount of deviation. This system has been updated and improved to retain its high level of performance. With rapid developments in vehicle technology and the increasing emphasis on early safety legislation (FMVSS/ECE/ EEC), Millbrook began side and rear impact testing. The introduction of crash test dummies into legislation at this time was the rst sign of the importance safety would have on the future of the automotive industry. In 1988 Millbrook began to trade independently, making it one of only two commercial
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Test buck on HyGe sled; dummy calibration test; offset deformable frontal impact test
full-scale crash test laboratories in the UK. This gave Millbrook the opportunity to build up its portfolio of crash test capabilities, using its experience with Vauxhall to develop and implement crash tests for a wide variety of vehicle manufacturers. In the late 1990s, Millbrook worked as a consortium under a GM research program to develop rollover tests to replicate real world crashes in the laboratory. As the test partner, Millbrook produced repeatable rollover tests that helped shape the industry standards used today, such as corkscrew, FMVSS 208, gravel trip, and ditch. Millbrook was an early adopter of miniature systems, which are easier to attach and have less effect on the vehicle during the crash test.
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Millbrook produced repeatable rollover tests that helped shape the industry standards used today, such as corkscrew, FMVSS 208, gravel trip, and ditch
Safety fact le
1958 Introduction of the seatbelt, the most benecial car safety device 1966 First mechanical anti-lock brakes (ABS) 1967 All cars sold in the UK must be tted with front seat belts 1968 First front-seat head restraints offered in production car 1978 First electronic ABS 1981 First car offered with a drivers airbag and seatbelt tensioner 1983 Becomes compulsory to wear front seatbelts in UK 1986 High-level third brake light is introduced 1987 New cars sold in the UK must be tted with rear seat belts 1991 Rear seat belts, if tted, must be worn by all occupants 1994 Pioneering crash tests carried out by European consumer organizations 1996 Euro NCAP established 1997 First active head restraints introduced 2005 Pop-up bonnets designed to reduce pedestrian injuries 2010 First Euro NCAP approved electric vehicle crash test in the UK 2014 ESC will be a requirement on every new car
Millbrooks engineers and customers have been inuential in the development of miniature systems, requesting smaller and lighter equipment for use in crash testing. In the early 2000s, Millbrook, in conjunction with one of the worlds largest vehicle manufacturers, requested a development of the ultra-compact TDAS G5 miniature data acquisition system (DAS), which is one-thirtieth the size and a fraction of the weight of a typical DAS. Designed for the WorldSID dummy, Millbrook foresaw the benets of using this DAS for all data collection, and in 2006 Millbrook became the rst crash facility to use the miniature device. Millbrook was also the rst independently managed test
center to invest in a new generation of microcams. The NAC Memrecam system, with a camera barely the size of a marker pen, reduced the weight of traditional camera systems by 75% and enabled the cameras to record interior vehicle movements during crash tests, including the interaction of the dummy with the pedals, oor and knee bolster, airbag deployment, and chest and head interaction with the steering wheel and airbag. Not content with being the rst facility in Europe to have a HyGe sled, Millbrook went on to develop its unique dipping sled, giving exceptional representation and signicantly improving the correlation of dummy kinematics and injury criterion. This earned
Millbrook the award for Testing Technology Innovation of the Year in 2007. In recent years, vehicle design has increasingly been carried out using sophisticated simulation software, with virtual tests being used to predict how the vehicle will behave in an actual test. Crash tests are now mostly carried out to assess the correlation between actual and predicted results, and to validate nal performance, making vehicle design much faster and reducing the number of tests that need to be carried out, saving time and money. The ever evolving automotive industry has seen a huge shift in recent years, from conventional petrol and diesel to alternative fueled vehicles, and Millbrook is increasingly being required to develop the protocols and procedures for crash testing future technologies. Millbrooks experience and understanding of these types of technology means it is now able to test everything from a lead-acid battery quadricycle to a lithium-ion family car and hybrid supercar, a million miles away from Millbrooks rst crash tests on the likes of the Vauxhall HA Viva or Firenza HP. Millbrook is currently conducting feasibility work for a new high-risk testing facility at its site, which would improve its capabilities in testing these types of vehicle, and help manufacturers push boundaries in the industry.
SEPTEMBER 2012
057
In-dummy data acquisition

With M=BUS the reproduction of crash tests is quicker and faulty wiring is almost impossible. The one-wire system is also safer due to the internal back-up systems that will preserve test data
Messring Systembau GmbH from Germany is renowned for its turnkey crash test facilities and its data acquisition systems. Covering the whole spectrum of products needed for a reliable and safe testing environment, Messring also produces state-of-the-art dummy and in-dummy data acquisition systems. The focus in the eld of dummy data acquisition development for Messring has been to combine compact, precise sensors and recorders with easy operability for all test engineers and technicians. This plug-andplay strategy is not only found in the dummy components of Messring, it is also one of the central policies of all crash test equipment the company currently has to offer. The data acquisition used in crash test dummies has come a long way from incorporating sensors that had only a single channel, up to 320 channels measuring the impact forces of the new WorldSID crash test dummy (worldwide harmonized side impact dummy, used for the assessment of vehicle occupant injury risk in lateral impact crash scenarios). The sheer size of the wiring harness for 320 channels with its sensors and recorders using the old methods of wiring would simply not be efcient nor operable in any way. This is why Messring has developed the M=BUS systems.
SEPTEMBER 2012
Messring
Tel: + 49 898 9813 9333 Email: sales@messring.de Web: www.messring.de
503
Every test engineer knows the problem the more cables that are used for wiring, the more sources of error one can encounter, not to mention the time-consuming process of setting up the whole test conguration. In 2003, engineers at Messring solved this omnipresent problem with the invention of a system called M=BUS. The proprietary M=BUS technology represents the next step in test equipment miniaturization. The system was introduced to simplify the entire process of data acquisition in the crash testing world. Dierk Arp, CEO at Messring, says, We are proud of the M=BUS devices; so many of our clients are now using this data acquisition technology. Its easy and quick installation, combined with the plug-and-play characteristic of the M=BUS system, is such a huge time-saver compared with the old data acquisition systems that some automobile manufacturers are still using. The customer feedback really
ABOVE: Head module with integrated M=BUS logger BELOW: The Messring technology integrated into a spine box
has been very positive and we are enhancing the M=BUS technology on a regular basis. Everyone involved in crash testing knows the problem of reproducibility of the individual tests and ultimately the test results. With M=BUS, the reproduction of crash tests are quicker and safer, and faulty wiring is almost impossible. The technology is quicker because of the one-wire system and safer due to the internal back-up systems that will preserve test data even if the cables are damaged in any way. Furthermore, the M=BUS concept makes it possible to automatically detect the position of the sensors within the entire system through the use of ID-Chips, thus almost eliminating the problem of faulty wiring. Under the notion that data is
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components. This mediumsized company designs and builds turnkey test sites for customers in all relevant markets and on nearly every continent. So far, more than 90 large crash test facilities have been completed by Messring for automobile manufacturers, insurance companies, or state-run facilities more than any other company. The company repeatedly surprises with its innovative advances or pioneering new solutions, not only in the construction of the facilities and the actual data acquisitioning, but also in the documenting and recording of individual tests. Whether it is Toyota or Volkswagen, the Chinese or Canadian Ministry of Transportation, or the German Automobile Club they all analyze vehicles, components, or other products on Messring facilities, testing almost everything that moves on roads, rail, or in the air. The behavior of vehicles in every conceivable accident scenario (e.g. vehicle against vehicle, or vehicle against stationary obstacle) is simulated, while the quality of safety equipment such as helmets, child car seats, belts, or airbags, can also be tested. However, Messring does not only stand for vehicle safety: the resilience of Castor casks for nuclear waste has been tested in the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing using a data acquisition system supplied by Messring.
supposed to be recorded where it is measured, the M=BUS recorders/loggers are also located much closer to the sensors compared with any ordinary wiring system. The M=BUS logger shows the progress in the miniaturization of data acquisition electronics. The small device, with a weight of only 15g, includes the whole signal conditioning, A/D-conversion, and data storage for six sensor channels. The most up-to-date logger Messring currently has to offer is the Version 6C. It is optimized for integration in crash test dummies and therefore also suitable for applications in the eld of impact testing. The one-wire M=BUS provides power, communication, and the trigger signal for all connected logger devices. Due to power-saving electronic components, any immoderate heating is prevented and cannot affect sensitive conditions. For the highest level of data security, the logger is equipped with a back-up system that is activated automatically in case of a damaged cable. Whether its three or six channels, this miniature data acquisition module provides full signal conditioning for in-dummy applications. Humanetics specializes in the design, development, and manufacturing of anthropomorphic test devices. For more than
ABOVE: Messring specializes in producing in-dummy data acquisition systems BELOW: The M=BUS logger
40 years, Humanetics has been the leader in crash test dummy innovation. In the 1950s, the US-based company pioneered the industry with the development of research dummies for testing air and spacecraft ejection seats. Messring has already been involved in a business partnership with Humanetics for many years, and the devices produced by Humanetics t together perfectly with Messrings M=BUS data acquisition system. Messring was founded in 1968 and is a manufacturer of crash test facilities and their
SEPTEMBER 2012
059
Modular metering pin technology

A combination of modular technology and metering pin design software is taking pulse shaping to new levels of precision, repeatability, and economy
As the rst equipment manufacturer to perform shock testing using acceleration to simulate forces imposed on objects under specied conditions, Hyge has set the standard in shock testing equipment for more than ve decades. The Hyge design was, and still is, subject to rigid specications for capacity, performance, and safety. Units are available in horizontal or vertical acceleration planes and can be modied to operate at any angle with exceptional results. The design is available to provide 40,000 lb of thrust (178,000N), 225,000 lb thrust (1,000,000N) or 1,000,000 lb thrust (4,500,000N). The technology has an exceptional ability to replicate actual crash tests, and its mechanical design features just two moving parts for easy maintenance. The Hyge is also reliable, with units in operation today that have performed more than 50,000 tests over 45 years. Hyge has now introduced a solution that both simplies and shortens the pulse shaping process and raises metering pin technology to new levels of accuracy, repeatability, and efciency. This solution is the Pulse Development System accessory. It utilizes the combination of Metering Pin software to develop and rene to desired results and the Modular Metering Pin for simple construction and easy modication as required to ne-tune the results.
SEPTEMBER 2012
Hyge
Tel: +1 724 545 8331 Email: dmyers@hyge.com Web: www.hyge.com
504
Used in combination with Hyges unique Metering Pin software, this technology marks an important advancement in pulse shaping. Developed through the analysis of vast amounts of information collected over many years from a variety of tests, the Modular Metering Pin accessory and Metering Pin software keep operating costs low while enhancing reliability, exibility and versatility. The Modular Metering Pin design consists of several components. For the main shaft, one end is machined to screw into the standard Hyge thrust column. The middle is precision machined to hold spacers, and the threaded end secures the assembly. The Starts (rst segments) have varying parameters for
ABOVE: The Metering Pin software can be used with the Modular Metering Pin kit to ne-tune the nal design
leading-edge pulse requirements, followed by segments of varying diameters; the nal component is a fastening nut/washer. The modular design enables modications to be made quickly and with little effort; adjustments to the pulse can be made by simply replacing segments with larger or smaller diameters as desired for pulse shaping. This provides rapid pulse tuning for development of new or one-time pulse requirements. Recording of the order and diameters enables the pin to be remade at any later date for additional testing, or can be used as a template to machine a solid pin. Hyges rened software program, used in combination with the Modular Metering Pin
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aircraft ejection seat testing, handheld equipment and small appliances, and components and subassemblies. Typical applications for the Dyna Test 500 for component testing include testing steering columns, engine and transmission mounts; testing door latches, fuel tank mounts and instrument panels; testing components such as bumper systems, door crush, front and rear panels; testing airbag systems (including ring circuits, sensors, squibs and airbag units); testing auto seatbelts (including belt design, webbing, hardware and anchors); testing auto interior parts, such as dashboards, bolsters and headliner trim; biodynamic testing of human subjects to determine biological limits and effects of shock; shock testing of automotive components sold as separate items, such as cellular phones; shock testing of automobile electronic control modules; testing of aircraft seats, seatbelts and components; shock testing of military and space systems and components; standard pedestrian safety tests; and pedal systems of vehicles. Hyge offers a broad range of upgrades to existing systems. Upgrades include a lightweight sled/secondary brake systems to enable increased payload or added pulse shaping. Also, Automation Control software can automate operation and enhance the operational safety of the system. Add-on options make operation even easier.
accessory, puts the power to design or modify a pulse at the operators ngertips. The software enables innite combinations of parameters (pressure, volumes, etc.) to be viewed and designed. The pulse shape is entered into the program, along with desired test parameters (payload, weight, load/set volume). Design starting parameters available include half sine, saw tooth, square, sine square, sine, and piece wise wave forms. The program then produces a metering pin prole and pressures at which to operate. These may be easily modied by changing operating parameters to achieve the desired effect on pin shape, velocity, etc. Each time a parameter is changed, the program recalculates and displays the effect the entered change will have. The Metering Pin software ensures that system operating parameters are not exceeded and provides suggestions to assist with development, including a preview of the pin shape and a table providing plotted points and dimensions for machining xed pin or modular pin design, and determining acceleration and velocity at each point. This prole may be easily modied by changing operational parameters to achieve the desired effect on pin shape. Because the 12in Hyge with its 1,000,000 Newtons of thrust is so commonly used in the industry, users may overlook other Hyge models.
ABOVE: The Modular Metering Pin consists of a main shaft with one end machined to screw in to the standard thrust column, a middle section machined to hold spacers, and a threaded end to secure the assembly
With the 24in model with 4,500,00 Newtons of thrust, typical applications include testing of airbag systems; side impact testing; testing auto seatbelts, including belt design, webbing, hardware and anchors; testing auto interior parts, such as dashboards, bolsters and headliner trim; side airbag testing; biodynamic testing of human subjects to determine biological limits and effects of shock; testing components such as bumper systems and front and rear panels; shock testing of automotive components sold as separate items, such as stereos and cellular telephones; testing of child restraint seats and booster seats; shock testing of automobile electronic control modules; testing of aircraft seats, seatbelts and components; testing effects of cargo inside aircraft cargo holds during extreme conditions; shock testing of military, space systems and components; and simulation of mine blast to US and European specications. The 6in vertical mount system is typically used for
SEPTEMBER 2012
061
Multi-camera control software

Several cameras within one network can be controlled and operated together during crash testing, using High Speed Visions sophisticated Visart software
Visart from High Speed Vision enables users to concentrate on their core responsibilities, because they can rely upon this intuitive software for a wide range of functions to take care of camera handling, conguration, and evaluation. All cameras within a network can be controlled with Visart. High Speed Vision believes that development in very close cooperation with the customer guarantees the best possible operation and a high level of convenience. Despite its high functional complexity, operation of the software is intuitive, meaning that its users quickly become familiar. These performance features make SpeedCam Visart a leading software package for controlling digital high-speed cameras. With the Visart software, the user can operate various different cameras together during a crash test. As well as use of High Speeds own cameras, the company also provides the individual integration of any other cameras that users wish to employ, or which are already in operation. Customers can easily assign identical settings to different cameras simultaneously by selecting the relevant cameras shown in the table and using the Properties menu to assign the required parameters to them (see Figure 1). The Table View gives a clearly arranged and tangible
SEPTEMBER 2012
High Speed Vision

Tel: +49 7216 6324 22 Email: info@hsvision.de Web: www.hsvision.de
505
representation of all connected cameras, and symbols make the cameras clearly identiable at all times. Consistent color coding throughout enables all relevant camera conditions to be seen from a distance, or from a poor viewing angle. The simultaneous download function enables back-up times for video data to be considerably shortened (Figure 3). In a modern network structure, the user will only need a personal
FIGURE 1 (TOP): Clear graphic representation of all cameras in a crash test facility FIGURE 2 (CENTER): System display showing all the cameras in recording mode FIGURE 3 (ABOVE): Simultaneous download of all video data is possible all at once
computer, removing the need for additional computer hardware, as well as potentially high servicing costs. Further details are available from the makers regarding the solutions for vehicle tests that Visart provides. It is important for High Speed Vision to always keep its Visart software abreast of customers demands, and working together, required new functions
062
Despite its high functional complexity, operation of the software is intuitive, meaning that users quickly become familiar with it
again the next day. The user simply saves the settings when nishing work and resumes the tests next day without interruption. Renewed conguration of the cameras is not necessary. High Speed Vision has more details available regarding the comprehensive solutions for automated, effective use of Visart software in a crash test facility. The Visart SpeedCam Board is designed to help users to adjust the focus of the camera, even when it is mounted inside a vehicle. Via a modern tablet PC, the user receives live images from all connected cameras using encoded WiFi. The makers are particularly proud of the Visart SpeedCam Boards high reaction speed. Of particular note is that all cameras integrated in Visart can be operated cable-free; the type or manufacturer of the camera is unimportant. For the rst time, it is now possible to operate existing camera installations without cables. In order to give customers detailed information about the current status of the test, the Visart SpeedCam Board can be used in Overview Mode (Figure 6) and the results presented on a large monitor or individually to the customers [compatible] smartphone. In Overview Mode, the operational conditions of all the cameras and the current status of the data recording can be shown.
can be developed. For example, an international motor vehicle manufacturer, located not far from the companys own facility, has supplemented project management by adding the Facility Conguration function to assist when repeat tests are performed. Facility Conguration (Figure 4) enables the user to enter the following testing parameters: name of the test, camera position, preferred
camera for this position, and camera settings for this position. Visart has automatically assigned the relevant cameras for the vehicle test and made the correct camera settings according to the pre-entered parameters, as well as checking the test setup for any inconsistencies. The preset conguration can be altered at any time using the mouse. This function is also helpful when a test setup is to be used
FIGURE 4 (TOP LEFT): Camera position management for a standard test FIGURE 5 (TOP RIGHT): Live image of a somewhat different crash scenario FIGURE 6 (ABOVE): SpeedCam Board in overview mode gives detailed information
SEPTEMBER 2012
063
Crash sled systems

The new ServoSled pitching system simulates vehicle pitching as seen in barrier test crashes
The global transportation market continues to evolve with new regulations and test requirements, and occupant safety remains an important part of customer expectations. Whether it be automobiles, aircraft, trains, or others, improved safety requires improved means to recreate actual conditions under as realistic terms as possible. These are especially necessary for structural development and analysis, and occupant safety systems. Although generally necessary for initial data input and validation, use of actual pre-production products can be extremely expensive and cost prohibitive, and as such, alternative means of physical testing that simulate full-scale tests are generally part of most development programs. Computer simulation tools are an effective tool for demonstrating trends of part performance and can signicantly reduce overall development cost and time; however, accuracy of the computer models is highly dependent on the input for those models, and a prime source of credible input is physical test data. Seattle Safety, located in Seattle, Washington, USA, is continually striving to meet the needs of its customers by offering test systems that enable them to conduct dynamic impact of full-vehicle barrier impacts, and highly accurate simulation of these
SEPTEMBER 2012
Seattle Safety
Tel: +1 206 304 9133 Email: nick@seattlesafety.com Web: www.seattlesafety.com
506
impacts with the ServoSled catapult sleds and decelerator sleds. Also included are lighting systems, side impact test systems, and sled pitching systems. Seattle Safety is undergoing correlation trials of its new sled pitching system with automotive OEMs and safety restraint suppliers at its ServoSled laboratory in Seattle. The system simulates vehicle pitching as seen in barrier test crashes. The system operates on the basis of creating a pre-set sled trajectory prior to conducting the dynamic test. An onboard pitching platform is installed onto the standard sled, to which the vehicle test buck is attached. As the sled is triggered and accelerated by the ServoSled propulsion system, the pitching platform and test buck is guided through an offboard support system to precisely replicate the vehicle pitch motion. The intended vehicle pitch prole is determined from photometrical analysis
ABOVE: ServoSled impact simulation test system BELOW: Sled pitching system
of barrier crash test videos. The data obtained from this analysis is used as input into Seattle Safety software to establish the pitch prole used during sled testing. The system is designed to be modular in nature and can be installed or removed within 60 minutes. It is available for new ServoSled installations, or as upgrades to existing ServoSled laboratories. Seattle Safety LLC, with its development center, and manufacturing in Seattle, offers a full line of test and peripheral equipment for crash testing. Product offerings to support its global customers include ServoSled crash simulation sleds, decelerator sleds, vehicle crash systems, lighting systems, supplemental subsystems, and full turnkey systems. In addition, Seattle Safety has a fully independent ServoSled laboratory for third-party contract testing and prove-out evaluation of ServoSled technologies, including sled pitch.
064
High-quality plasma lamps

For detailed data analysis, the use of plasma lighting offers clear, enhanced image quality with high color intensity and sharpness
Photographic images, whether of public events or details of automotive structures, share common basic principles. The image on the right illustrates the same swimming pool in the same arena the dramatic difference rests in the lighting used in the facility. Details in the image on the left are soft and murky, while the depth of eld and color rendering on the right deliver greater denition of detail and true and vibrant colors. The lighting on the left is standard metal halide (HMI type) lighting, while the lighting on the right is Luminys Plasma lighting. Why is there such a difference? The modern CMOS video sensor chip is now used in all modern high-speed video cameras. Both the chip and the Luminys Plasma lights are matched to 5,000 Kelvin color temperature while metal halide lights have a Kelvin of 6,000 to 7,500 with a poor CRI (color rendering index) in the 80s, and they vary greatly in color quality from batch to batch and with age. The lighting brilliance in the arena comes through in the image because of the superior technology of the Luminys Plasma lamps. Luminys Enhanced Spectrum Plasma lamps are extremely consistent at 5,000 Kelvin and 96 CRI from batch to batch and with age. This means that when you light a subject with them, the camera can work much more
Luminys Systems Corp

Tel: +1 323 461 6361 127 Email: dpringle@luminyscorp.com Web: www.luminyscorp.com
cinematographers, and lighting directors are becoming increasingly aware of the Luminys Plasma light look with eye-popping colors, enhanced details, and skin tones that are real and full of life. But how does this translate into something useful and necessary for vehicle safety testing, where realistic skin tones and eye-popping colors may be considered to be of little use? The answer is simple every video camera sensor processes light after it passes
507
Safety comes from the accurate analysis that is made possible with highly accurate images
ABOVE: Image showing the difference in quality when different lighting is used
efficiently and naturally to effectively produce a higher quality image because of the excellent color quality of the lamps. This high color quality is due to the high CRI (color rendering index) of 96 out of 100, as opposed to conventional lighting such as metal halide, HMI, or LED, which have CRI ratings in the 70s and 80s only. Although LEDs hold promise for eventual savings in operating costs due to efficient output numbers, they suffer from poor color quality due to the unavoidable limitations of the phosphors used to create the light energy. Professional photographers,
through the camera lens. When the light that the camera processes is clean and pure with a high CRI and accurately matched to the color temperature sensitivity of the camera, the images of metal bending (or holding) under impact will be a clear, sharp, and accurate rendition of what is actually taking place. The improved images made possible by the excellent light quality greatly assist in the detailed analysis of just how and where a particular part or assembly is being stressed by a particular force. Safety comes from the accurate analysis that is made possible with highly accurate images.
SEPTEMBER 2012
065
Standardization in crash analysis

The MeasX, X-Crash software package has been chosen by Euro NCAP as its standard crash test analysis and reporting tool
In vehicle safety, the standardization of tests and processes is an essential prerequisite for comparable worldwide results. The aim is to have car safety ratings independent from the time and location where tests are performed. The algorithms and rating processes in different regulations such as Euro NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) USA, China, or J-NCAP are standardized. All regulations include the dened performance of tests such as frontal impact, side impact, roll over, pedestrian safety, and others. In addition, to dene the tests and algorithms to extract safety parameters such as HIC (head injury criterion), Euro NCAP has gone a step further: the organization now requires all of its accredited crash test facilities (in Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands) to use measXs X-Crash system as a standard analysis and reporting tool. Euro NCAP chose X-Crash, because it provides complete implementation of all evaluation criteria, which are kept constantly up to date. Errors are avoided through consistent checks of raw data and a largely automated report generation evaluation analysis. X-Crash is a DIAdem-based crash analysis tool, which includes setups to generate automatically complete reports according to different NCAP standards. Besides the use of naming conventions, and
SEPTEMBER 2012
MeasX
Tel: +49 2166 95200 Email: info@measx.com Web: www.measx.com
508
plausibility checks for sensor direction or broken wires, it also provides an extensive interactive tool for analyzing large amounts of crash test data quickly. This includes synchronous replay of measured, calculated, and video data. The development of X-Crash continues in close cooperation with Euro NCAP, since the demands in vehicle safety increase from year to year. Therefore, X-Crash
ABOVE: System shot of the X-Crash software, which is used by Euro NCAP
already includes the integration of ESC tests and DEQ algorithm (equivalent chest deection) even before these tests become mandatory. The results from measXs driving dynamics software, MOSES, are seamlessly integrated into the reports generated by X-Crash. As a complementary product, measX offers its X-Crash ATD, an ATD calibration software.
066
High-performance connectors
Lemos connectors have again proved their worth in one of the worlds toughest motor races, the Le Mans 24 Hours
Rebellion Racing has repeated its 2011 success at the Le Mans 24 Hours. Once again, Rebellion Racings Lola-Toyota cars topped the petrol/privateer eld from the start of the race. The Lola-Toyota #12 driven by Nick Heidfeld, Neel Jani, and Nicolas Prost, and the #13 sister car driven by Andrea Belicchi, Harold Primat, and Jeroen Bleekemolen, were never out the top eight (including the six Audi and Toyota factory cars) during the rst four hours of the race. With mechanical and trafc issues for the factory cars, the two black and gold liveried Lola-Toyota coupes were strongly positioned in the top six from the sixth hour. After the early retirement of both factory Toyota TS030 Hybrids, Rebellions two petrol-powered coupes were the only team to break the Audi stranglehold, with car #12 running fourth from the seventh hour. The nal two hours of the race were intense for the Swiss team. The Lola-Toyota #13 with Harold Primat and Andrea Belicchi scheduled for the last stints were able to recover, and climbed on the FIA WEC Privateer Trophy podium in front of the #21 HPD-Honda. Lemo, a Switzerland-based company, is proud to be part of that achievement. The M series connector, introduced in 2008, is widely used on the LolaToyota. The ratchet screw mechanism enables quick and secure coupling of the
LEMO S.A.
Tel: +41 216951600 Email: info@lemo.com Web: www.lemo.com
509
ABOVE: Rebellion Racings Lola-Toyota nished fourth at the 2012 Le Mans 24 Hours BELOW: Lemo 5M series ratchet connector with a maximum of 114 contacts
connectors, making it easier to tighten the plug in the socket than to untighten it, thus ensuring a rm connection. The connector is available with two different shell designs: arctic grip or knurled outer shell. The arctic grip design makes it easy to manipulate the connector while wearing gloves or when the connector is located in an area that is difcult to access. The connector is environmentally sealed with ingress protection to IP68. A sealing gasket made of uororubber (Viton) ensures resistance against hydrocarbons such as oil and petrol. The series is produced in various sizes (nominal diameter from 13mm to 34mm) and offers high-density pin count with up to 114 contacts.
Lemo connectors are tested for vibrations. They are subject to conditions involving vibrations in each of the three orthogonal axes (X, Y, Z) during 12 hours. According to standard IEC 600-68-2-6, the connector is subject to vibrations at a frequency range of 25Hz up to 2kHz and must continue to function. The electrical contacts and electrical shield must ensure electrical continuity during the entire test. Micro cut-offs should last less than 1s. Finally a visual examination of the mechanical characteristics conrms that the connector remains t to function. Find out more information by visiting the companys website or visit Lemos booth at Automotive Testing Expo China 2012.
SEPTEMBER 2012
067
Compact onboard LED lighting

The correct light is a key factor to consider in ensuring that accurate data results are obtained
The directive for greater safety has necessitated the development of complex, integrated vehicle systems. This, in turn, has placed an even greater burden on crash testing facilities to provide extensive amounts of high-quality data. Modern high-speed digital cameras, developed to meet this challenge, continue to push the resolution and frame rate envelope. These cameras, however, must be integrated with proper lighting to attain their performance potential. The introduction of side curtain airbag systems, more sophisticated belt restraint systems, and more complex interior designs, has driven the need to develop systems to record their performance in both simulated and actual vehicle crash tests. To accomplish this, cameras must now be located in many areas that are difcult, or impossible, to illuminate using exterior lighting systems. High-speed, high-resolution digital video dictates the use of new technology lighting systems. The latest CMOS camera technology can deliver signicantly higher resolutions and light sensitivity, along with increased color delity. To achieve this, it is essential to replicate natural sunlight as closely as possible, while supplying the required light intensity. The denitive criteria are correlated color temperature (CCT) and color rendering index. Additionally,
SEPTEMBER 2012
EYE Lighting International

Tel: +1 440 350 7000 Email: rob.freitag@eyelighting.com Web: www.eyelighting.com
510
as frame rates have increased, it is more important than ever to ensure stable, icker-free lighting. In facilities where many kinds of testing, such as frontal impact, side impact, and roll-overs must be performed using the same equipment, system exibility is essential. The camera lighting system needs to be properly positioned to ensure uniform illumination for each different test setup. Working with key customers, EYE Lighting/Iwasaki Electric has developed a compact onboard LED lighting system to solve most of these application problems. The new EYE LED onboard system uses proprietary LED optics and electronics. LED systems use much less power to achieve the desired illuminance level. The lower energy consumption and lower heat output protect against interior and test dummy heat-up. The limitation has been developing an LED
ABOVE: The new EYE/Iwasaki onboard system from EYE Lighting is designed to withstand high-g stresses of onboard applications
system that can produce the required light quality and intensity, while withstanding the high-g stresses of onboard applications. Key features of the new EYE/Iwasaki onboard system include: a high-g LED xture tested during operation to 100g; a complimentary high-g power/distribution pack for up to four LED xtures; 5,000K CCT to provide true natural sunlight simulation; integrated 12V/24V LED electronics for safe onboard operation from existing power sources; instant On/Off for rapid setup and test conguration; and a compact design to provide additional exibility for mounting in restricted areas Crash testing is time consuming and costly, yet the need for more testing and for new kinds of testing will continue to increase. A properly integrated lighting system will signicantly increase test productivity, while decreasing operational and maintenance costs. EYE/Iwasaki is unique in its capability to design and manufacture application specic lamps, xtures, electronics, and control systems specic to the needs of high-speed crash test lming. Engineering, installation, and service/ maintenance personnel, located at the companys manufacturing operations in Mentor, Ohio, ensure prompt application support and trouble-free project implementation.
068
Support for WorldSID dummies

Meggitts sensing technologies for crash test are supporting WorldSID 50th percentile dummy requirements
Meggitt Sensing Systems, a Meggitt group division, is a leading global supplier of high-reliability sensing technologies for physical parameter measurements within crash test and other extreme vehicle legislative and safety test environments. Meggitt piezoresistive accelerometers, offered under the Endevco brand, are used to support such critical requirements as vehicle rollover detection; rotational acceleration; front, side, and rear vehicle impact; crush zone and passenger safety systems; in-vehicle occupant and pedestrian safety; and anthropomorphic test devices, in accordance with SAEJ211, SAE2570, and other recognized global standards. Meggitt sensors and instrumentation have also recently been earmarked to support new WorldSID 50th percentile dummy instrumentation, slated for adoption by many of the worlds largest automotive OEMs and their associated crash test laboratories. Endevco piezoresistive accelerometers are widely regarded as the industry standard for these and other related applications, due to their compact size, high output, relatively low mass, and high-reliability measurement capabilities of high shock and vibration inputs, rotational acceleration/ deceleration, and long duration transient motion, further offering seamless compatibility
Meggitt Sensing Systems

Tel: +1 949 493 8181 Web: www.meggittsensingsystems.com
ABOVE: A temperature-compensated, piezoresistive rotational accelerometer with fluid-damping is often specified for vehicle rollover testing
ABOVE: The model 7268C accelerometer is WorldSID-dummy approved, including Euro SID-1 and Euro SID-2, with specifications that meet Euro NCAP, SAEJ211, and SAEJ2570 standards
ABOVE: The unique design of the model 7302BM4 effectively rejects cross-axis angular and linear accelerations
to in-dummy and onboard data acquisition systems. Among the most popular choices are models within the Endevco 7264C series. These accelerometers offer a MEMS-based monolithic, undamped, full bridge circuit design with integral mechanical stops, producing virtually no phase shift over the useful frequency range, with broad frequency response and best-in-class 10,000g shock survivability. A wide range of excitation voltages is available to ensure data acquisition system compatibility. The 7264C is also optionally available with <1% transverse sensitivity and <25 mV zero measurand output to support more stringent requirements, with fixed resistors to facilitate shunt calibration. With a frequency response extending down to DC (steady state), the accelerometer can reliably measure the long duration transient shocks common to vehicle front, rear, and side impact events, and ATDs, particularly where the source
and location of impact can be directly identified. For applications in which impact source or direction may be less apparent, the use of a high-output, triaxial piezoresistive accelerometer with broad frequency response, such as the Endevco model 7268C, is specified. This accelerometer facilitates simultaneous high-shock measurements across three orthogonal axes within a single, compact package, with two fixed resistors to enable per axis shunt calibration. Models 7264C and 7268C are both WorldSID-dummy approved, including Euro SID-1 and Euro SID-2, with specifications that further meet Euro NCAP, SAEJ211, and SAEJ2570 standards. In addition, for ATDsimulated vehicle rollover human body response measurements, the use of a fluid-damped piezoresistive rotational accelerometer to ensure optimal frequency and phase response throughout its operating temperature range is recommended. For these applications, the Endevco 7302BM4 is commonly specified. The design and performance attributes of this accelerometer enable it to effectively reject crossaxis angular and linear accelerations, with stable frequency response from 0 to 1,600Hz and high angular and linear shock resistance, along with a nominal sensitivity of 5.0 mV per krad/sec2 and a 250 mV full-scale (nominal) output, allowing it to meet or exceed critical requirements.
SEPTEMBER 2012
069
511
Data acquisition systems and sensors

For dynamic testing and human injury assessment, DTS offers an extensive range of data acquisition systems and sensors
Each year in the USA, car crashes claim the lives of more than 30,000 people and another three million are injured. The calculated cost to society is more than US$150 billion. Consider all other modes of transportation, add sports and military injuries, and the worldwide numbers become astronomical. Im always proud that we work on applications where the cost benet to society is enormous. We are a niche in the data collection market, but it has a big impact on everyday life. The millions spent on research saves billions in human cost, says Steve Pruitt, president and co-founder of Diversied Technical Systems (DTS), a manufacturer of high-performance data acquisition systems (DAS) and sensors used in human injury assessment. We are often asked what exactly does DTS do? adds Pruitt. I say that we are the guys that make the smallest, highest shock rated, fastest sampling DAS in the world, with mega-sample recording in a cubic inch. Our systems are on board no umbilicals or trailing cables. In many ways, DTS has been a driving force behind the technology of safety testing in terms of miniaturization and rugged enclosures so that the DAS can be on board without disturbing test dynamics and actually survive. DTS has helped collect data from manikins in jetliner
SEPTEMBER 2012
Application Hard Target SLICE HG Gun Launch Military Blast TDAS G5 SLICE PRO SLICE NANO 6DX PRO TSR PRO ARS PRO 5,000 g 20,000 g 100 ksps DTS Product Shock 100,000 g Sample Rate 1 Msps
Diversied Technical Systems

Tel: +1 562 493 0158 Email: sales@dtsweb.com Web: www.dtsweb.com
512
Vehicle Safety
500 g
20 ksps
Motorsport
100 g
5 ksps
and helicopter crash tests, from a stunt high diver plunging more than 10m into only 300mm of water, from rodeo riders, aerobatic pilots, cadavers, and many more unique, human injury related applications, says Pruitt. In its 20-year history, DTS systems have been used in almost every kind of human injury related testing imaginable, including blast-induced traumatic brain injury (TBI). This has also led to the development of very high-performance angular rate sensors capable of measuring 50,000/sec. Nothing comes close, says Pruitt condently. Many consider 3,0004,000 samples per second (sps) fast sampling, and 50g high shock. But for DTS customers and applications, sampling rates start at 10ksps and go to one million sps. High shock starts at 100g, with systems capable of accurately measuring and surviving up to 50,000g. Applications include race car crashes
ABOVE: DTS onboard DAS provide high-g and high-sampling BELOW: Data recorders collect critical data on human injury and survivability
(theres a DTS TSR shock recorder in every NASCAR National Touring Series car), pedestrian testing and vehicle blast. Pruitt says, Another important factor for 90% of our customers is that there is no second chance. The tests are too expensive and take too much time to prepare not collecting data is not an option.
In recent years, DTS has pushed into what they call embedded sensing. We are creating embedded products, not only capable of collecting data from sensors, but also analyzing in real time, he explains. More than 20,000 DTS helmet sensor/recorder systems have been elded by the US Army. In continued efforts to reduce and diagnose TBI, DTS is now helping embed an algorithm that calculates possible head injury risk, displaying information both visually and wirelessly to medics. We have also embedded black boxes for military vehicles and have started working on sports helmets with ultra-low power systems that run on coin cell batteries for months, says Pruitt. DTS TDAS, SLICE, TSR, ARS, and other products, support university, commercial, military and biomechanics research to better understand human injury mechanisms.
070
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Instron Structural Testing Systems (IST)
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44
SEPTEMBER 2012
071
LEGENDS
It was GM that led the way in introducing airbags as standard equipment in production vehicles in the 1970s
GM MEDIA ARCHIVE
Following John W. Hetricks rst airbag invention (see Crash Test Technology edition September 2006) in the 1950s, which never made it into mass production, and several other abortive attempts to launch airbag technology into the world of auto safety, the 1974 Oldsmobile Toronado Brougham was the rst car to feature an airbag system built on a production basis and made available to the public: the Air Cushion Restraint System. After eld-testing more than 1,000 vehicles, the system proved reliable and safe, and experts believed it would be key in reducing many highway deaths and injuries. It worked using three subsystems: a sensing system, drivers restraint system, and passengers restraint system, similar to the airbag systems utilized in cars today. Sensors were mounted in the front bumper and under the dashboard, and activated inator modules. In the blink of an eye the driver and passenger airbags could be inated; to be precise, within 60 milliseconds, which is quicker than the blink of an eye. The passengers airbag consisted of an inator and two cushions, one inside the other, designed to protect the upper and lower torso. The drivers combined an energy-absorbing steering column with an airbag and a knee restraint pad mounted below the steering column on the lower dashboard. An impulse detector mounted on the front bumper provided a signal to the driver and passenger systems. The device could detect two levels of deceleration in order to determine the severity of impact. The inator system worked using compressed argon gas and two chemical gas generators. When a severe enough collision was detected, the gases were released from the inator. Hopes were high for the new technology. GM president, Edward N. Cole, predicted that 50,000 Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac cars would be sold in 1974 equipped with the new GM restraint system. However, the development of airbag systems in the 1970s was not straightforward. With the airbags not operating in conjunction with seatbelt tensioners (that would only come with Mercedes-Benz in 1981), in some cases airbags caused more harm than good, severely injuring occupants on impact or even killing them. In 1988 Chrysler became the rst car company to offer airbag systems as standard equipment. It wasnt until years later, in 1998, that it became a legal requirement in the USA for all cars and light trucks to be produced with passenger and driver airbags.
SEPTEMBER 2012
experts talk Fords safety testing about crash y exclusively Ford philosoph under the One
Steven Keller
and Wayne Bahr
Pedestrian impact
s How Euro NCAPsystem g tougher scorin rds is driving up standa
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SEPTEMBER 2012

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The ATD firm goes from strength to strength

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