COME

Car Body Design

1 History of Crashworthiness
Dr. habil. Fabian Duddeck
Department of Engineering
Queen Mary College, London University
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
f.duddeck@qmul.ac.uk

Car Body Design

First Motor Cars, 1886

Carl Benz
(1844 1929)

Benz Car (1886)

Car Body Design

First Motor Race, 1895

Champion: J. Frank Duryea, Mean Velocity: 12 km/h

Car Body Design

First Killed Pedestrians, 1896

Mrs. Bridgette Driscol of Croyden was the first person

killed by a car when she left the Crystal Palace in London.
Car Body Design

Early Accident Statistics (Germany)

Year

1906/07

1907/08 1908/09 1909/10 1910/11 1911/12 1912/13

Car accidents

4,864

5,069

6,063

6,774

8,431

10,105

11,785

Accidents per
100 cars

13.2

11.9

11.9

11.5

11.8

12.6

12.3

Injured occupants

2,419

2,630

2,945

3,651

4,262

5,542

6,313

145

141

194

278

343

442

504

Killed occupants

Car Body Design

Change the Car/Driver or the Victim/Environment?

In 1913, more than 4,000 people
died in car accidents (USA).
By the 1930s, more than 30,000
people died every year.
In an effort to lower accident and
death rates, safety advocates
stressed the Three Es:
engineering,
enforcement, and
education.
Since most safety advocates
assumed that careless people were
the cause of wrecks, early safety
efforts focused on educating drivers
and pedestrians, rather than
designing and producing safer
automobiles and highways.

Car Body Design

1908

Education
Song by Charles P. Hughes, 1924
10,000 Little Children were killed by
autos in 1924. There are 12 principal
Commandments of Safety. Keep these
and you will be safe from accidents. Be
sure to show your work to daddy and
mother and your teacher. Be a little
Apostle of Safety. Have your teacher form
an ABC Club, which means Always Be
Careful, and sing the Safety Song at
home and in school.

The songs lyrics were laden with

advice to avoid being hit by a car, but
placed the onus of responsibility on
the child, not the driver:
When you're playing in the street don't
forget that danger's near
With the noise of scrambling feet you
can't hear the cars appear
And soon the little friend you loved lies
in pain
You may never see him again.

Beware Little Children

From the Smithsonian Collection

Car Body Design

Early Accidents
Rigid Structure for Safety?

Is this a safe vehicle?

Is this a safe vehicle?

Car Body Design

First Experiments
DKW Auto-Union, 1937/38
The AUTO UNION AG, based in
Chemnitz, Germany, was the first
car manufacturer to develop an
empirical crash program in
1937/38.
They performed front, side, pole
impacts and rollover tests.
The rollovers were captured in a
test film, the other tests were too
fast. The cars were dropped
sideways from a ramp.
The intention was to test the
strength of the bodies as part of the
development program for the
introduction of plastic or wooden
structures.
The studies were motivated by the
aim to replace metal for car
structures by wood or plastics
without loosing crashworthiness.
Car Body Design

First Biomechanics
John Paul Stapp, 1944
In 1944, John Stapp started
research in aerospace medicine
for the U.S. air force.
The first rocket-sled deceleration
research program at Edwards Air
Force Base on the Mojave Desert
was Stapp's first project related to
passive safety.
His assignment was to determine
human tolerance to deceleration
and protection from crash forces.
John Stapp started to be concerned
not with the structure but with the
human body.
Often, he himself was the test
object.

Car Body Design

First Biomechanics
John Paul Stapp, 1944
The rocket-sled accelerated 400 m on
tracks to attain aircraft landing speeds,
then was subjected to aircraft crash
deceleration. Metal scoops beneath
the sled plowed into a trough of water
for the slow-down.
Thirty-two rocket runs were made with
a dummy passenger before Stapp took
his first ride in Dec. 1947. By
May 1948 he had taken 16 rides in
the backward-facing position, with
stresses up to 35 times the pull of
gravity. This was double the stress
that had previously been set as the
limit of human tolerance.
These experiments proved that
backward-facing seats would give air
transport passengers optimum crash
protection.
Car Body Design

First Conferences, 1955

John Paul Stapp
The first Car Crash Conferences
were organized in 1955 by
John P. Stapp.
He presented at the Holloman Air
Base sled tests and auto crash
tests; aspects of automotive design
and safety features were discussed.
Many of the safety features
discussed and recommended were
passed along to traffic experts and
automotive engineers, e.g.:
- moving dashboards
- energy absorbing padding;
- fitting doors with safety locks;
- removing rear window shelves;
- fastening seats
- bumper design;

50th Stapp Car

Crash
Conference
November 6-8,
2006

http://www.stapp.org
Car Body Design

Public Attention to Car Safety

Ralph Nader, 1965: Unsafe at any Speed
In 1965, Ralph Nader targeted
General Motors and the
American auto industry in his
best-selling book Unsafe at any
Speed The Designed-In
Dangers of the American
Automobile.

Nader was referring to the Chevrolet Corvair as

"Unsafe at Any Speed", NOT all cars unsafe at
any speed, with the implication that speed limits
must be cracked down on.
Ralph Naders controversial book alerted the
public to unsafe features of automotive design
and played a key role in establishing
government safety standards for cars.

Car Body Design

Public Attention to Car Safety

Ralph Nader, 1965: Unsafe at any Speed

Chevrolet Corvair
Car Body Design

Bla Barnyi, 1907 1997

Patent for the Crash Crumble Zone, 1951

Car Body Design

Bla Barnyi, 1950 1960

Crash-safe Door Lock

Simulation Model for a Current

Door Lock, BMW, 2004.
Car Body Design

Mercedes Benz, 1950s

First Sled Tests
Insights:
The possibility to survive in a crash
with 50 km/h was almost zero;
25% of the fatalities happened
because the occupants were thrown
out of the vehicles;
The design of the interior is not
adequate to prevent severe head
injuries;
The newly proposed belting
systems are really improving safety;
The steering wheel and the
instrumental board should be
adopted to head and chest impacts.

Car Body Design

Mercedes Benz, 1962

Crash Barriers along the Roads

Car Body Design

Daimler-Benz, 1962
Rocket Wagon for Crash Tests
For acceleration (14 m/s), a hot
water rocket wagon was developed
(pressurized container, fast opening
valve, ejection nozzle).
The container is filled with water
and heated up (temperature: 260
C, 50 at). After opening of the valve,
the water is vaporizing outside of
the container.
It was not possible to integrate the
rocket into the vehicle itself without
modifying the structure remarkably.

Car Body Design

Bla Barnyi, 1963

Patent for a Safety Steering Wheel

Car Body Design

Full Car Crash Tests (Frontal Impact)

BMW (1966) and Mercedes-Benz (1960s)

BMW
Car-to-car and roll-over tests

Barrier tests

Mercedes-Benz
Car Body Design

Establishment of Crash Tests

E.g. Mercedes Benz, 1970s

New acceleration method based

on an electric linear motor that
runs underneath the vehicles
along a 100-meter trench.
New video systems have been
developed.
Deformable and non-deformable
barriers were used.

Car Body Design

First Seat Belts and Airbags

Mercedes Benz, 1980

First Safety belts already in the

19th century;
Nils Bohlin invented the threepoint belt and introduced it into the
Volvo cars in 1959.
First Airbags really applied in the
1980ies.

Car Body Design

Modern Test Tracks

UTAC, Paris

Car Body Design

Crash Video
Renault / UTAC, 2005

Car Body Design

Crashed Cars
DaimlerChrysler

Car Body Design