Measurement of Heavy Vehicle Impact Forces and Inertia Properties: Final Report

The purpose of the research presented in this report was to design and construct an instrumented wall which is capable of measuring the impact forces associated with heavy vehicle impacts. The design of the instrumented wall was based on the design of a previous instrumented wall which was developed to measure the impact forces associated with lighter vehicles. The instrumented wall consists of four concrete segments which are supported on low friction teflon pads and instrumented with load cells and accelerometers. The instrumented wall was used to measure the impact forces associated with a variety of vehicles including a full size automobile, two pickups, two Suburbans, an intercity bus, a single unit truck, and three tractor trailer rigs. In addition, to the direct measurement of the impact forces associated with the various vehicles, an approximate technique was developed which allows the impact force to be estimated using the results of onboard vehicle accelerometers. Results from the approximate analysis are shown to compare favorably with the results from the instrumented wall.