Passive safety of light vehicles – effect of speed on the behavior of the vehicle frame structure

Abstract

Due to growing concerns about the climate change situation, an increasing number of restrictions are being introduced. One of them is the shift towards smaller and lighter vehicles that are less demanding to produce, operate, and subsequently recycle. These are specifically L6 and L7 vehicles (four-wheelers called quadricycles). In addition, even for these vehicles, there is an attempt to make their operation even more environmentally sustainable by introducing government regulations on the powertrain, which will have to be purely electric from 2035. However, the growing popularity of these vehicles has one major drawback: safety. In the framework of the urban electric vehicle project located at the Faculty of Transportation Sciences, CTU in Prague, from the already mentioned category, safety is one of the main topics we want to address. This paper discusses the passive safety of quadricycles and the role of FEM simulations throughout the design and development phase of vehicles. The main objective is to validate the main frame of the developed vehicle at an extensive range of impact velocities. In this way, the behavior of the proposed front crumple zone design and their roles in frontal impact can be determined. The metrics to be monitored are, for example, the maximum accelerations on the structure in each part of the frontal crumple zone or the preservation of the survival space.