A study on the crashworthiness and rollover characteristics of low-floor bus made of sandwich composites

This paper describes the results of the numerical evaluation on crashworthiness and rollover characteristics of a lowfloor bus vehicle made of sandwich composites. The sandwich composite used for the vehicle structures was composed of aluminum honeycomb core and WR580/NF4000 glass-fabric/epoxy laminate facesheets. Material tests were conducted to determine the input parameters of the composite laminate facesheet model and the effective equivalent damage model for the orthotropic honeycomb core material. Crashworthiness and rollover analysis of the low-floor bus was conducted using the explicit finite element method (FEM) analysis code LS-DYNA3D with the lapse of time. The crash condition of the low-floor bus was a frontal accident with a speed of 60 km/h. Rollover analysis was done according to the safety rules of the European standards (ECE-R66). The angular and translation velocity and its angle with the ground just before impact for rollover were calculated using the dynamic analysis program. The results showed that the survival spaces for the driver and passengers were secured against frontal crashworthiness and rollover of the low-floor bus. In addition, the modified Chang-Chang failure criterion is recommended to predict the failure modes of the composite structures for crashworthiness and rollover analysis.