A New Method to Model Aluminium Honeycomb Based Crash Barriers in Lateral and Frontal Crash Load Cases

Using Finite Element Method (FEM) it is possible to show and predict the behaviour of the vehicle’s structure during a crash test. To ensure good simulation results compared to the reality it is not only necessary to correctly build up the FE-model of the vehicle, but to simulate the real behaviour of the crash barrier too. To meet this demand a new method for modelling and simulating crash barriers has been developed. This method is based on discrete beam elements to model the aluminium honeycomb structure. The major advantage of this method is the possibility to show realistic global and local deformation behaviour of honeycomb structures that includes all characteristic deformation modes. To ensure high quality crash barrier models an effort was done on testing and validating. Over all, the results of the validation work show a good accordance of the acceleration, the force results and of the deformation behaviour of all structures.