| | Category | PH | P33 | Effect of Car Design Parameters in Protection of Passengers in Car |
| | Crashes |
| | Abstract | Over the last 5 years, there have been nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents |
| | per year on an average in the United States. Millions of people are injured |
| | and over 42,000 are killed each year. How do we mitigate the injury to the |
| | victims? Does a stronger vehicle cushion the force of the impact and |
| | enable passengers to fare better? What is the role of seat-restraint in |
| | mitigating the force of the impact? What is the role of air-bags? These |
| | important questions are addressed in this project by designing crash |
| | impact experiments involving these variables and analyzing the results and |
| | more importantly using laws of physics to explain the results. |
| | |
| | The project uses a impact ramp (courtesy Ford Motor Corporation) to |
| | simulate the impact of car crashes with a number of pertinent variables. |
| | Firstly, I designed “front ends” to simulate “stiff” (strongly built) cars, “soft” |
| | (lightly built) cars and intermediate strength cars. Effective ways to |
| | simulate seat restraints and air-bags were also designed. Initially, the |
| | crash impact to the passenger was measured by conducting experiments |
| | varying the velocity and acceleration. This was done by adjusting the |
| | length of the impact ramp. For each length, the results of the impact for a |
| | “stiff” car, “soft” car, and an intermediate car were measured. By these |
| | steps I established, the car design that offers the best "raw" impact |
| | protection. |
| | |
| | In the next stage of the experiment, I measured additional impact protection |
| | afforded to the passenger by seat restraint systems and airbags. This |
| | experiment was conducted on the car design that offered the best “raw” |
| | impact protection. The impact results were measured for no restraints, |
| | seat restraint only, air-bags only and with both seat restraint and air-bags. |
| | The data collected was the impact observation and the "crush"distance |
| | of the fender. |
| | |
| | Finally, I utilized the laws of physics to calculate, validate and explain the |
| | results obtained. |
| | Bibliography | Physics by Holt, Rinehart, Winston |