Statistical Analysis Of Correlation Between Vehicle And Occupant Responses And Vehicle Characteristics

It is often said that there are specific design guidelines in different countries and for different manufacturers, which lead to different structural designs and largely similar level of crash performance and safety ratings. Manufacturers adopt different structural designs, body mate-rials and joining methods for different vehicle models, aimed at meeting different tastes of customers in different markets. Many designs also reflect manufacturers'traditions, cultures, and design philosophies. Their commonness and uniqueness are worth of investigation. To-day most of the tested vehicles offer a good protection of the occupant due to the technology achievements over the years, and yet there are significant differences in their structural de-sign.The objective of this mini thesis was to statistically analyze the crash test results in the NHTSA database. Selecting enough tests from the database, the crash pulses of full frontal crash tests were examined to evaluate their characteristics for several categories of vehicles and try to reveal relations between vehicle and occupant responses and vehicle characteris-tics like vehicle's mass, length, stiffness or make.