AEROFLEX AEROdynamic and FLEXible Trucks, Rethinking Long Distance Road Transport

THE VISION OF THE AEROFLEX PROJECT IS TO SUPPORT VEHICLE MANUFACTURERS TO ACHIEVE THE COMING CHALLENGES FOR ROAD FREIGHT TRANSPORT. A new vision of future logistics for physical goods is required to achieve a sustainable logistics and transport system, a paradigm shift described as 'The Physical Internet'; rethinking future freight transport by the optimisation of multi-modal transport chains by drawing on the advantages of the different modes. Thus, it is essential to develop flexible and adaptable vehicles and loading units with optimised aerodynamics, powertrain for low emission and highly efficiency. The optimal matching of novel vehicle concepts and infrastructures is crucial, requiring intelligent access policies for trucks, load carriers and road infrastructures. This paper summarises its overall preliminary results. It covers boundaries and constraints from a market perspective, hybrid distributed powertrain and aerodynamic features for the complete vehicle, smart loading units, front-end design and finally consequences regarding the regulatory framework

TRANSFORMERS - Configurable and Adaptable Trucks and Trailers for Optimal Transport

Proceedings of 7th Transport Research Arena TRA 2018, VIENNE, AUTRICHE, 16-/04/2018 - 19/04/2019; This contribution is based on the European collaborative project TRANSFORMERS (Configurable and adaptable trucks and trailers for optimal transport), which received co-funding from the European Commission. The project has the goal of reducing energy use per tonne.kilometre of goods transported by up to 25%. This is achieved by innovations including: i) Configurable whole vehicle aerodynamics, ii) Improved loading efficiency measures, iii) A distributed, trailer mounted electric driveline known as 'hybrid-on-demand' for truck-semitrailer combinations. The combination of innovations gives the possibility of a semi-trailer combination which can be adapted or re-configured to suit individual transport missions. The paper focuses on providing background to the project, an overview of the innovations developed within the project, and the main conclusions that were drawn from the wide range of work undertaken within the project. It covers both the 'Energy Efficiency' and the 'Load Optimisation' trailers which were developed and tested within the project. Document type: Conference objec

Assessment of integrated vehicle safety systems for improved vehicle safety

Road safety is a major societal issue. In 2009, more than 35,000 people died on the roads of the European Union, i.e. the equivalent of a medium town, and no fewer than 1,500,000 persons were injured. The cost for society is huge, representing approximately 130 billion Euros in 2009. In view of this the European road safety policy orientations up to 2020 new technologies that have high potential to improve road safety should be promoted. This includes Integrated Safety Systems (ISS) like pre-crash systems with collision warning or autonomous vehicle actions. For such systems it is stated that “Accelerated deployment and broad market take-up of such safety enhancing applications needs to be supported in order for their full potential to be unleashed”. The ASSESS project is directly responding to this by developing test and assessment procedures for the evaluation of pre-crash systems. Methods are being developed for driver behavioural aspects, pre-crash sensing performance and crash performance under conditions influenced by pre-crash driver and vehicle actions. The gained know-how will be implemented in proposals for test and assessment procedures that will be evaluated on the basis of actual systems currently offered to the market. The ASSESS project started in July 2009. This paper presents results achieved during the first two years of the project including activities on test scenario definition, test tool development and first test results on driver behavioural aspects and pre-crash performance evaluation

Final report

Road safety is a major societal issue. In 2009, more than 35,000 people died on the roads of the European Union, i.e. the equivalent of a medium town, and no fewer than 1,500,000 persons were injured1. The cost for society is huge, representing approximately 130 billion Euros in 2009. In view of this the European road safety policy orientations identify new technologies that have a high potential to improve road safety and should be promoted up to 2020. These new technologies identified as being able to improve road safety include advanced restraint systems. As a contribution to the improvement of road safety the THORAX project studied thoracic injuries. Injury mechanisms and the influence of occupant diversity factors like age and gender were investigated. The gained knowledge was implemented in numerical and experimental tools that enable the design and evaluation of advanced vehicle restraint systems which are capable of offering optimal protection for a wide variety of car occupants.To develop the improved design and evaluation tools THORAX was structured in four work packages related to accident surveys, biomechanical studies, dummy development and dummy evaluations. Work-Package 1 analysed real world car crash data to provide detailed information on the type and severity of injuries in relation to impact type, restraint type, and occupant characteristics. The survey revealed rib fracture as the predominant thoracic injury and focus for the tool developments. Detailed case studies comparing real world accidents and consumer rating tests showed that female occupants generally are at higher risk in car crashes compared to males. In Work-Package 2 a set of biomechanical requirements for an enhanced shoulder thorax complex of a frontal impact dummy was defined. A suit of Post Mortem Human Subject (PMHS) data was collected and documented in detail for reproduction with the new tools. Missing data were identified and additional tests conducted to complete the dataset. In addition injury mechanisms and governing parameters were studied using Human Body Models. For this purpose PHMS tests conducted under welldefined conditions were simulated using human body models identifying excessive bending strain in the ribs as key factor for the initiation of rib fractures. Based on this finding two injury criteria were proposed. The first correlates dummy chest deflections at four locations to fractures observed in PMHS tests under various conditions in matched dummy – PMHS tests. The second uses local strain data measured around the dummy ribs. Based on the biomechanical requirements a demonstrator dummy with improved thorax and shoulder designs was developed in Work-Package 3. Three prototypes were built and installed on available THOR dummies. The demonstrators were subjected to extensive evaluation testing, reproducing the PMHS tests collected under Work-Package 2. Testing showed a superior biofidelity of the demonstrator compared to existing HIII and THOR dummies. The data was used also to generate preliminary injury risk curves related to the criteria proposed. As a final step, in Work-Package 4, the demonstrator dummy was subjected to extensive testing in a vehicle environment to assess its sensitivity to typical state of the art vehicle restraint systems. Full scale and sled tests were performed in which the demonstrators showed increased sensitivity to different loading severities, loading directions and restraint variations compared to the HIII. The injury risk prediction using the THORAX risk curves was in line with assumed real life observations. It was also shown that current restraint systems will need updates to conform to current rating levels in terms of injury risk. As such it is expected that the THOR injury risk evaluation using risk functions for young and elderly people as well as AIS2+ will result in further reduced injuries due to frontal injuries. During the entire runtime of the project information was shared with key stakeholders in the field. Results and findings were forwarded to Euro NCAP and the GRSP Informal Group on Frontal Impacts. Based on the THORAX findings both groups decided to include dummies representing females in their future crash test procedures. Also the GRSP Informal Group placed the THOR dummy on the agenda for their phase 2 update of the frontal impact directive for the 2020 timeframe. Information exchange with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration resulted in the preliminary adoption of the new shoulder design and thorax updates from THORAX. This design will be evaluated in 2013 by NHTSA for decision making at the end of 2013

Car-Car Crash Compatibility: Development of Crash Test Procedures in the VC-COMPAT Project

The project “Improvement of Vehicle Crash Compatibility through the development of Crash Test Procedures” (VC-Compat) is a research activity sponsored under the European Commission 5th Framework Programme. It consists of two parallel research activities, one focusing on car-to-car compatibility and the other on car-to-truck compatibility. The main objective of the car-to-car research is the development of crash test procedures to assess frontal impact crash compatibility. The car-to-truck objective is to develop test methods to assess energy absorbing frontal underrun protection for trucks. This paper reports on the car-to-car compatibility work completed in the first 36 months of a 45 month project. <p> The car-to-car work program is comprised of four main activities, a structural survey, cost benefit analyses, crash testing, and supporting modelling work. A survey of European passenger vehicles has been conducted to construct a database of common crashworthiness structures and general car structures. A review of the detailed accident databases and national data in Germany and UK has been used to estimate the benefit expected from improved vehicle compatibility. Crash testing (car-to-car and car-to-barrier) has been used to identify desirable characteristics for vehicle crash compatibility as well as help determine assessment protocols to evaluate (quantify) compatible crash performance. A set of complementary modelling activities has been implemented to review crash test and fleet performance of vehicles to investigate the crash test procedures and their influence on road safety. All these activities have focussed on the development of a suite of test procedures that are capable of assessing a car’s structural interaction potential, namely the Full Width Deformable Barrier (FWDB) and Progressive Deformable Barrier (PDB) tests. These tests have different approaches; the FWDB assessment is based on Load Cell Wall force measurements whereas the PDB assessment is based on deformation measurements. </p><p> This work supports the activities of the European Enhanced Vehicle safety Committee (EEVC) frontal impact and compatibility working group (WG15), which has the task to propose draft test procedures to assess a vehicle’s crash compatibility in 2007. These draft procedures will include recommended assessment criteria and associated performance limits.</p

Car-Car Crash Compatibility: Development of Crash Test Procedures in the VC-COMPAT Project

The project “Improvement of Vehicle Crash Compatibility through the development of Crash Test Procedures” (VC-Compat) is a research activity sponsored under the European Commission 5th Framework Programme. It consists of two parallel research activities, one focusing on car-to-car compatibility and the other on car-to-truck compatibility. The main objective of the car-to-car research is the development of crash test procedures to assess frontal impact crash compatibility. The car-to-truck objective is to develop test methods to assess energy absorbing frontal underrun protection for trucks. This paper reports on the car-to-car compatibility work completed in the first 36 months of a 45 month project.The car-to-car work program is comprised of four main activities, a structural survey, cost benefit analyses, crash testing, and supporting modelling work. A survey of European passenger vehicles has been conducted to construct a database of common crashworthiness structures and general car structures. A review of the detailed accident databases and national data in Germany and UK has been used to estimate the benefit expected from improved vehicle compatibility. Crash testing (car-to-car and car-to-barrier) has been used to identify desirable characteristics for vehicle crash compatibility as well as help determine assessment protocols to evaluate (quantify) compatible crash performance. A set of complementary modelling activities has been implemented to review crash test and fleet performance of vehicles to investigate the crash test procedures and their influence on road safety. All these activities have focussed on the development of a suite of test procedures that are capable of assessing a car’s structural interaction potential, namely the Full Width Deformable Barrier (FWDB) and Progressive Deformable Barrier (PDB) tests. These tests have different approaches; the FWDB assessment is based on Load Cell Wall force measurements whereas the PDB assessment is based on deformation measurements.This work supports the activities of the European Enhanced Vehicle safety Committee (EEVC) frontal impact and compatibility working group (WG15), which has the task to propose draft test procedures to assess a vehicle’s crash compatibility in 2007. These draft procedures will include recommended assessment criteria and associated performance limits

Aerodynamic and flexible Trucks for next Generation of Long Distance Road Transport (AEROFLEX)

Der Beitrag stellt das EU Projekt AEROFLEX vor. Es werden die Ziele des Projektes erläutert und die in den ersten Monaten erreichten Ergebnisse dargestellt. Es geht im Projekt darum, längere und schwere Lkw-Fahrzeugkonfigurationen für den europäischen Markt zu bestimmen, technische Komponenten zu entwickeln und zu testen sowie das für diese längeren und schwereren Lkw vorhandene Marktpotenzial in der EU abzuschätzen. Am Ende wird ein Ausblick auf die weiteren Arbeiten gegeben