Front impact attenuator design for a race car

Wheatley, Greg, and Zaeimi, Mohammad (2020) Front impact attenuator design for a race car. International Journal of Crashworthiness. (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper outlines the design, analysis and physical testing of the material for the front impact attenuator for the Motorsports car. The material selected was a 20 mm thick panel of veiled polypropylene honeycomb. The design programme Solidworks was used to produce three impact attenuator geometries for analysis – a solid block, a three-tier pyramid and a four-tier pyramid. The impact attenuator was simplified to solid blocks specified with the honeycomb material strengths and tested in ANSYS 14.0. The simulations did indicate that the four-tier pyramid had the greatest energy absorption behaviours. Two full size prototypes were manufactured and destructively tested. The forcedisplacement curve determined that prototype MKII achieved total energy absorption of 7591 J. The average deceleration was 17.66 g and maximum deceleration was 30.58 g. The polypropylene honeycomb energy absorption and deceleration values comply with FSAE requirements.

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