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This paper describes the design and development of an advanced instrumentation Moving Deformable Barrier (MDB) for use in research crash testing to address vehicle aggressitivity and compatability issues. The instrumented MDB design is an adaptation of the current Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS No. 214) MDB design and duplicates as closely as possible its physical and dynamic specifications. Forty-four equally spaced low weight triaxial load cells are placed behind the main body of the aluminum honeycomb structure. In addition, an equal number of string potentiometers are placed in the rear of the cart to measure the honeycomb crush. The triaxial load cells were specially designed to measure forces in both the longitudinal and shear directions. During the initial design stage, the number of load cells, their weight, placement, type, durability and measuring capacity were considered.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) upgraded the side impact protection requirement in Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 214 and added dynamic requirements to reduce the likelihood of thoracic injuries in side crashes. As part of the agency's research in developing the requirements of the standard, NHTSA developed a mathematical model for simulation of side impacts. This paper investigates the overall safety performance, based on Thoracic Trauma Index (TTI) as the criteria for passenger cars in real world side crashes, with the aid of the simulation model. A Thoracic Trauma Index Factor (TTIF) is utilized to compare relative safety performance of passenger cars under various conditions of impact. The concept of relating energy dissipation in various side structure and padding countermeasures is used to develop a family of curves that are representative of a design platform.