Development of New Generation Mobile Deformable Barrier

The barrier face that using the current regulation of Japan and the European Union (EU) was developed in the stiffness of ’70s vehicles. Therefore, the stiffness of this barrier is different from the current vehicles that adapts to the frontal impact tests and considering of compatibility. Then, the authors did the development of the new barrier face that the stiffness of the current vehicles including the small sized sports utility vehicles was reproduced. First, the authors investigated the stiffness of the front-end of the vehicle for ’98MY in IHRA-SIWG. Next, the authors started the development of the barrier face in based on the results of this investigation. In the same time, they started the development of new barrier face in Europe. So, the authors cooperated with their development for harmonization. The developed barrier face named the advanced European mobile deformable barrier (AE-MDB) is the almost matched to the stiffness of investigated results of current vehicles. However, the deformation mode was different between the car-to-car test and the MDB-to-car test. Therefore, the authors did more improvement in the barrier face. The improvement items were the addition of the beam element and the tuning of the stiffness of lower row. The beam element is reproduced the bumper reinforcement of the actual vehicle. In these improvements, the authors completed the development of the new barrier face that matched to the stiffness of the current vehicle, and the same deformation mode between the car-to-car (CTC) test and the MDB-to-car test. The authors hope that this barrier face is adopted in the new regulations for side impact.