Further Improvements to the Truck Model for Roadside Safety Simulation – Suspension and Steering

Pickup trucks are commonly used for crash testing of roadside safety hardware, while nonlinear finite element analysis using LS-DYNA is commonly used to simulate that crash testing. To improve the accuracy of simulation a new front suspension and steering system was developed to replace the existing system on a pickup truck model used for roadside safety simulation. All of the critical components, such as mounting points, alignment, track width and mass, were incorporated into the new model, along with the capability to make the most important components deformable by carefully modeling the geometric details. It is believed that these modifications significantly improve the performance of simulating impacts with roadside curbs, rocks, or culvert grates, where dynamic suspension movement is essential, and with guardrail systems when deformation of the lower control arm is important