The aim of this research is to study the bending response of metal foam-filled beams applied to enhance the energy-absorbing capacity of coach structures under rollover conditions. The study of the energy absorption of metal foam-filled beams was performed using advanced pore morphology foam by varying the density and length of the foam filling. The work was done using finite-element models and static bending tests with empty and metal foam-filled beams. The comparison between the experimental results and the finite-element models was validated using validation metrics. The results obtained from this research work show that metal foam filling in beams substantially increases both the plastic deformation energy and the specific energy absorbed with respect to the empty beams. Therefore, filling beams with metal foam is presented as a potential solution for enhancing the rollover response of coach structures and consequently for improving the safety of the occupants.

The European pedestrian regulations (formerly Directive 2003/102 and currently Regulation 2009/631 and recently modified by Commission Regulation [EU] No. 2011/459) have always approached the protection of lower extremities in pedestrian accidents with tests in the front part of the vehicle using rigid impactors. This approach offers a lot of advantage regarding the repeatability, robustness and reproducibility that these tests need but on the contrary decouple the injury occurrence through the different body areas. It is widely supported to approach pedestrian head protection and lower extremities protection in separate tests; however, there is not such consensus in decoupling pedestrian lower leg injuries from the upper leg injuries, especially in the case of high bumper vehicles. The objective of this paper is to look into the details of this close dependence through a set of simulations with THUMS 50th percentile male pedestrian finite element human model impacted by a wide set of high bumper vehicles. The analysis of both the kinematics and the injury occurrence in these scenarios has shown the strong coupling between the upper and lower leg injuries for this vehicle fleet, requiring therefore assessing both type of injuries at the same time.

One of the key components of inflatable restraint systems is the gas generator (inflator). This relevance of the generator is mainly due to the fact that it is the only active component on most airbag systems. Each new car model requires a new process of developement and system integration to set up the performance of the restraint system. This process usually demands a performance adjustment of the gas generator to optimise the overall behaviour of the whole system. Often, the number of gas generator configurations available from serial or prototype manufacturing does not cover the whole range of each design parameter. Also, the time needed to manufacture a prototype definition of a gas generator can be delayed from some days to several months, depending on the extent of the required modifications. This process can be significantly shortened by a simulation approach that provides the performance at the output of a particular gas generator. The present work describes a new analytical model of a pyrotechnical gas generator developed in Matlab/Simulink code. The advantage of the selection of this software is that it can be linked with most of the vehicle crash simulation softwares currently available in the market. Also, the utilisation of the block modelling technique of Simulink allows the easy implementation of new capabilities to the model. The model has been built to reproduce the performance of the inflator measured on the widely accepted closed tank test. Finally, to guarantee the predictability of the model it has been validated by means of (1) the comparision, made at three different test temperatures, of the theoretical results with the baseline of the results of the tank pressure tests performed during one year of serial production of a particular gas generator model; (2) comparing gas generator variability limits for tank test performance, calculated with the same serial production gas generators, with the variability limits obtained by means of a Monte Carlo analysis using the analytical model. It is demonstrated by means of this validation of robustness of the presented model.