The Traffic Accident Reconstruction Origin -ARnews-

Re: Crush Analysis

Ed Phillips (edphill@aol.com)
Fri, 2 Aug 1996 10:04:04 -0400 (EDT)

Jason

The damage that you are looking at after a collision is the extent of plastic deformation (minus perhaps a little elastic rebound) and is a record of the speed change the structure underwent. The change in speed occuring during the crash pulse of (usually) less than 100 ms is an indication of what acceleration the vehicles underwent during their exchange of momentum. It would not be appropriate to try to imply pre-impact velocities to this as it is most often only a portion of the momentum that pre-existed the collision. You may envision it GENERALLY as the type of damage you would see if you crashed that particular vehcile into a barrier at the computed speed change but remember the involved structures (car to car vs. car to barrier) are different and this may effect the absorbed energy by each structure.
Ed Phillips
edphill@aol.com

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