Front impact attenuator design for a race car

Wheatley, Greg, and Zaeimi, Mohammad (2022) Front impact attenuator design for a race car. International Journal of Crashworthiness, 27 (2). pp. 466-475.

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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 force-displacement 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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