Attenuators

An impact attenuator is a device used to protect a vehicle from damage during a collision, thus preventing the risk of injury to the driver and passengers. Attenuators are used both on public roads and on racetracks as well as built into the vehicles themselves. Nowadays, with an increasing number of injuries that occur during car races due to higher speeds on the tracks, and lower acceptance of injuries, the driver's safety has become a major area of research. The designer must be able to design and build structures able to dissipate the greatest amount of kinetic energy with progressive and controlled crushing, in order to avoid high deceleration peaks dangerous to humans. Given the complexity of the dynamic phenomenon and the use of new materials, such as fiber-reinforced polymer materials, time, and cost of development tend to grow. The use of software dedicated to the finite element (FE) modeling, and optimization can help to reduce cost significantly. The simulated results, however, cannot be used directly without thorough validation with experimental results. The purpose of this article is to present some crashworthiness analysis conducted on frontal impact attenuators, made of conventional, and composite materials, from a numerical and experimental point of view. The results of the FE analysis, obtained using the solver LS-DYNA, proved to be in good agreement with the experimental data, confirming the quality of the numerical simulation.