Researchers develop truck fronts to minimize injuries

A truck front made of aluminum honeycomb could make accidents between heavy trucks and cars less devastating in the future. The design has already proven itself in crash tests.

Collisions between heavy trucks and cars can have serious consequences for the car occupants. To reduce the number of fatal collisions, a team from Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology has now developed a new KW front that was able to reduce the deformation of the car interior by 30 to 60 percent in crash tests. The more intact this interior remains, the lower the risk of injury and possible death for the vehicle’s occupants.

As the research group explained in a statement, collisions between trucks and cars were responsible for between 14 and 16 percent of all fatal crashes involving car occupants in both the EU and the US. In more than 90 percent of traffic accidents involving trucks, the other party, usually a car passenger, dies.

According to the Swedish researchers, the most common types of accidents are head-on collisions on country roads and rear-end collisions on highways where the truck rear-ends the vehicle in front – so that the car’s occupants survive, the car cabin must remain as intact as possible. But even modern cars couldn’t do that in collisions with heavy trucks.

That’s why the Swedish research team has now designed a new truck front that aims to make the impact process safer for the car’s occupants. In photographs published by the university, the front appears as a protruding slat-reinforced box. «The interior design of the new truck front consists of aluminum honeycombs. “It is a structure consisting of repeating hexagonal tubes made of aluminum foil,” explains Robert Thomson of the university’s vehicle safety department.

This structure is ideal for a lightweight, energy-absorbing structure because approximately 97 percent of its volume is air. “Aluminum honeycombs are used in many crash test barriers to create distributed force and absorb energy. By changing the film thickness, we can change the force and deformation properties,” says Thomson. The design also provides the necessary flexibility in production to create prototypes and demonstrate the feasibility of implementation.

During the development, the research group took into account the truck size regulations that have been in force in Europe since 2019. The new front has already proven itself in crash tests: the researchers had a heavily loaded truck with the new front collide with a car at a speed of 50 kilometers per hour (km/h): In the tests, an original driving speed of 80 km/h was achieved. you are simulated, which has been reduced by 30 km/h by automatic emergency braking, as required in newer cars and trucks.

According to the research group, the tests showed that the structure can reduce deformation of the car interior by 30 to 60 percent, reducing the risk of injury to vehicle occupants. In addition, the new front also reduces deformation of the truck in sensitive areas, increasing the safety of truck drivers and the load. (saw/sda/dpa)