Alternative Models of the Offset and Side Impact Deformable Barriers

The deformable barriers consist mainly of honeycomb blocks with highly anisotropic behaviour. These parts are made from several layers with aluminium foil that is glued and stretched to form the honeycomb structure. Simple compression tests show high stiffness and strength when the cell structure is folded while both stiffness and strength are significantly lower when the deformation mode is mainly bending of the thin foil. Remember that the typical deformation mode involve also transverse displacement of barrier parts, and when the honeycomb structure is folded this may be seen as the interaction between local and global buckling. Therefore, shell elements are used to model the honeycomb structure, and alternative models of the offset and the side impact deformable barriers are made. Note that scaling is used extensively to limit the number of elements and thereby the computational time that is required. These models with about 30 000 shell elements seem able to predict the global response of the deformable barriers, and they may be easily refined to represent more local behaviour as well.