For further information contact: Joseph H. Canova, P.E. Vice President Engineering Dynamics Corporation (503) 644-4500 FAX: (503) 526-0905

Tractor-Trailer Collision Simulation Now Possible

BEAVERTON, OR — February 15, 1999 — Safety researchers can now simulate crashes of tractor-trailer combinations and multi-axle heavy commercial vehicles with the EDSMAC4 (Engineering Dynamics Simulation Model of Automobile Collisions) simulation program. EDSMAC4 was originally developed to simulate collisions involving passenger cars and light-trucks. EDSMAC4 has now been extended to include a robust model for collisions involving articulated vehicles towing any number of trailers, with or without dollys. Researchers can use EDSMAC4 to study real world crashes and to set up staged collision tests.

EDSMAC4 is a HVE-compatible simulation program. Detailed analysis of vehicle trajectories and damage profiles simulated by EDSMAC4 are visualized at every time step of the simulation using HVE's 3-D viewers. Because the vehicle body mesh typically includes several thousand nodes, HVE displays the resulting damage in great detail. Researchers can compare simulated damage profiles against actual damage from staged collisions or real world crashes as a means to evaluate the validity of their impact simulation results. EDSMAC4 also produces a collision pulse that may be imported directly into any HVE-compatible occupant simulation model for studying the effects of impact for humans involved in the simulated crash.

Trademarks: EDSMAC4 and HVE are trademarks of Engineering Dynamics Corporation.