The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has invested many resources in the development of finite element models (FEM) of passenger vehicles, pickup trucks, and roadside safety hardware. Computer simulations using these FEM’s of collisions between the vehicles and roadside safety hardware are used to investigate the behavior of and improve the safety performance of roadside safety hardware. An essential step for developing the FEM is to validate the models by comparing data from simulation output with data collected from full-scale vehicle crash tests with roadside safety hardware. The FHWA’s Federal Outdoor Impact Laboratory (FOIL) was used to conduct several crash tests to provide simulation engineers with data for the FEM validation process. The test vehicles used for the crash tests were 1994 Chevrolet C2500 pickup trucks. The C2500 pickup truck tests were broadside collisions between the pickup trucks and a narrow object. The narrow fixed object in these tests was either the FOIL’s instrumented rigid pole or a Valmont Industries three-bolt Slip Away lighting standard. The rigid pole tests were conducted to provide side-impact crush characteristics of the Chevrolet C2500 to support validation of the truck FEM. The lighting standard tests were conducted to provide data in support of validation of a simulated collision between the pickup truck and a common roadside safety device. This test report outlines the laboratory test procedures, test setup, and results from one of the broadside crash tests.
This report documents the test procedures followed and test results from one broadside crash test between a Chevrolet C2500 pickup truck and the FOIL instrumented 300K rigid pole. Many of the test procedures followed (dummy positioning and vehicle preparation) are outlined in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 214.(1) The test was conducted at the FHWA’s FOIL facility located at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC) in McLean, Virginia. The crash test will provide simulation engineers with data that will aid in the development and validation of a finite element side-impact model of a 2,000-kg pickup truck. The target test speed for the test and target vehicle inertial weight of the Chevrolet C2500 were 35 km/h and 2,000 kg, respectively. The target test weight, including one anthropometric dummy, was 2,080 kg. The dummy used was a calibrated SIDH3 dummy supplied by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). A SIDH3 dummy is a combination of a Hybrid III dummy used for frontal crash testing and a side-impact dummy (SID) used for side-impact testing. In addition, the NHTSA supplied an OSCAR to determine the three-dimensional location of a dummy’s hip point (H-point). This information was used the morning of the test to place the dummy in the proper