The Behaviour of Instrument Clusters during High-Speed Crash Testing

More information

Main author

Christopher Goddard; David Price

Co-Authors

-

Type of media

PDF

Publication type

Lecture

Publication year

2015

Publisher

24. EVU Conference, Edinburgh

Citation

-

edinburg2015 11ePrevious research [1, 2] has established the ability for the needles of some types of instrument cluster to remain in position after an impact. However, another researcher found variable behaviour of instruments [3]. Following our investigation of numerous makes of instruments a set of 5 criteria was introduced to determine if there was a level of confidence in the residual reading. One of the criteria was that the vehicle should have had a predominately frontal impact, as we had not investigated the behaviour in side impacts in detail. As part of more recent ITAI crash tests a number of instrument clusters were installed in vehicles to simulate a side impact. Impact speeds were recorded as high as 120 km/h. The results show that some instrument types will hold their pre-impact position even during high speed side impacts.
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