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Bus superstructures may soon be subject to new rollover safety requirements. Increased rollover safety must be achieved with minimum weight or cost penalty; hence, optimisation has a significant practical relevance. This paper demonstrates the possibility of predicting the collapse performance of a bus superstructure by a completely theoretical model. The work described also created a basis for the option offered by the new regulations that allows type approval by calculation combined with some component tests. It also shows how a safety structure can be optimised from the weight or cost point of view by means of a special computer program.

The paper reviews the main results of the theoretical and experimental analysis of the multiaxial collapse modes in rectangular section tubes used in bus and other vehicle structures. The tubes were tested quasistatically to collapse under the uniaxial bending, biaxial bending, pure torsion, torsion combined with uniaxial bending and torsion combined with biaxial bending. Hinge characteristics under multiaxial loading were simulated by a combination of the uniaxial collapse data. The analytical model compared well with the experiments.