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Gold award: Investigating crash damage
In this project, students investigate how velocity and other factors affect the extent of bodywork damage in head-on collisions between model vehicles.
A family car travelling at 30 mph has about 90 kJ of kinetic energy. In a crash, this reduces to zero almost instantly. Vehicle designers aim to ensure that this energy is transferred and dissipated as safely as possible. ‘Crumple zones’ are designed to absorb the energy by using it to bend the metal bodywork into a crumpled mass. In a head-on collision between two similar vehicles, travelling at the same speed in opposite directions, double the energy has to be dissipated. Does this result in greater damage? Is the damage evened out between the two vehicles? What if the vehicles are travelling at different speed, but the same combined speed (closing speed) as before?
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