Series on Engineering Mechanics - Vol. 1
WHEN IT COMES TO THE CRUNCH: THE MECHANICS OF CAR COLLISIONS
by Noel W Murray (Monash Univ., Australia)
This book explains how the car, as a structure, behaves in various types of accidents. In order to understand such behaviour the special features of car structures and the elementary physics of car collisions are explained. These ideas are the applied to roll-overs, side impacts, head-on collisions, etc. The reader is then shown how accidents can be analysed. The existing international rules for the design of car structures are also studied and it soon becomes apparent that these rules are inadequate in many respects. This is probably the main reason why racing drivers survive the severest accidents but many ordinary motorists do not survive crashes at one quarter of the speed.
Contents:
- Introduction: About the Structure of a Motor Car
- The
Physics of Impacts between Deformable Bodies
- Roll-over and Roof Strength
- Side Impacts
- Frontal Impacts
- Collisions into the Rear Ends of Cars
- Low-velocity Property-damage Accidents
- Loose Objects in Cars
- Conclusion
Readership: High school physics students and the general public.
"... an excellent presentation of the basics of car-crash mechanics, and should certainly be used by secondary schools as an introduction to the application of the principles of Physics to real life situations that every student has a statistical certainty of experiencing in his or her lifetime."
G A Knights
Focus, 1995
(Australian Acad. of Technology Sci. & Engrg.) |
"I recommend this book to anyone interested in car safety ... Everyone can gain something from this book whether they have a good knowledge of the subject or none at all."
Norman Jones
Hazards Forum, 1995
(The Inst. of Civil Engineers) |
"... an important book with plenty of drawings as well as calculations and graphs."
| 180pp |
Pub. date: Jan 1995 |
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