Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

1998

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

Gregory Thompson.

Abstract

Numerical simulation of automotive crashes play an important role in reducing the cost and time taken for predicting the results of a collision. Computer simulation of a vehicle requires that the vehicle structure be modeled in a finite element package by discretizing the geometry into a number of elements.;Every day thousands of children travel to school and school related events by bus. Not necessarily all the journeys are short and safely driven. The potential for serious injuries is possible in the event of a crash. The severity of injury in an offset frontal impact is higher than the full frontal impact, because of the offset in the principal direction of the impact force.;A finite element model of a school bus was created in I-DEAS Master Series. The body structure was modeled with the rib structure and the body skin. The chassis was modeled with engine, gearbox, drive train, and axles. The body structure was attached to the chassis to create a complete finite element model of the bus. IDEADYN was used as a translator to write a LS-DYNA3D input file. Full frontal and offset frontal impacts were simulated in LS-DYNA3D with an initial velocity of 56 km/hr against a rigid wall. Since hourglassing energy was high in the previous results, a higher order integration was done for all the thin shell elements with Hughes-Liu SR thin shell elements. LS-TAURUS was used to post process the results obtained from the simulation. The results from the analysis included nodal displacement, velocity and accelerations, energy absorption, rigid wall forces, and occupant intrusion. The results from the two cases, with and without hourglassing energy, were compared.

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