Development of a High Strain-Rate Dependent Vehicle Model

M. Dietenberger (University Stuttgart), M. Buyuk, Prof. C.-D. Kan (George Washington University, NHTSA) Vehicle collisions can be considered as a highly dynamic deformation process, where structural steel deforms under different strain rates. Therefore, an appropriate material model, which takes rate affects into account, has to be chosen for a good numerical model. In this study, five different strain-rate sensitive material models are investigated and their influence on vehicle simulations is compared. The main objective of this investigation is to include strain rate effects for the evaluation of crashworthiness response of components and a full-scale vehicle with the use of various constitutive equations. Chevrolet-C2500 pickup truck model, is utilized as a test platform for this comparison. Corresponding NCAP test results for this particular vehicle are used to compare the numerical response. LS-DYNA [1] is used for the finite element simulations as a non-linear explicit dynamics numerical solver.