The objective of this program is to develop the computational tools, methodologies, and models for the evaluation of the fleet compatibility of new concept passenger vehicles being developed under the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV).

PNGV proposes to develop a revolutionary new set of passenger vehicles which will take full advantage of emerging new technologies to produce a three-fold improvement in fuel efficiency. Together, the U.S. Government and U.S. car manufacturers have chosen three target vehicles for demonstration of the new technologies: the Chevrolet Lumina, the Ford Taurus, and the Dodge Intrepid. One major constraint on the PNGV designs is to ensure that the overall crash and other safety attributes of the PNGV developed vehicles are not compromised by their light weight and the use of new advanced materials used in production of the vehicles. In addition to single car impacts, the U.S. traffic environment will expose the PNGV-modified vehicles to multi-vehicle impacts with a wide range of collision partners. Successful PNGV designs must protect their occupants in both single vehicle impacts, as well as be compatible with other vehicles in the fleet.

The goals of this research program are to ensure that PNGV developed vehicles meet both existing and anticipated safety standards, and to ensure overall safety is not compromised by their light weight and use of advanced materials in the production of the vehicles.

This program is composed of the following tasks:

• Development of finite element models of the baseline PNGV vehicles and representative potential collision partners for simulation of full-frontal, frontal-offset, frontal-barrier, and side impact collisions.
• Development of occupant compartment models for simulation of PNGV occupant response in collisions.
• Development of Crash Statistics describing the U.S. crash environment to which PNGV vehicles will be exposed in years 2000-2005 time frame.
• Systems modeling of baseline PNGV vehicles.

This project will support the PNGV program by developing the computational tools and methodologies for the evaluation of the fleet compatibility of new concept passenger vehicles being developed under the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV). These tools will be used by U.S. car manufacturers to ensure that proposed new PNGV technologies are crashworthy and compatible with non-PNGV vehicles in the fleet.