Vehicle crash development

Vehicle safety targets are primarily driven by legislation and the legal requirements which must be met in order to sell vehicles in a particular market. These are also complemented by the OEM internal company standards, and external factors such as consumer group and insurance testing, competitor vehicles, etc.

With extensive experience gained on previous projects, Stadco's FEA team is familiar with the new vehicle developments covered by European, Federal, and Japanese homologation regulations, together with associated NCAP requirements. Our specialism is in meeting the challenge of developing a design to meet the sometimes conflicting requirements of each market

The Federal market, with the need to consider the unbelted occupant, provides a tough challenge, particularly for smaller vehicles. Stadco's experience has shown, that by careful energy management within the structure and detailed evaluation focussing on hardware and trim, as well as the structural elements of the design, vehicles (including those in the sub B category) can successfully meet the requirements.

Unlike many companies, Stadco has substantial experience in designing lightweight vehicle structure from steel, aluminium, carbon fibre, and hybrid solutions - for the full range of European and Federal crashworthiness requirements. Our carbon fibre experience includes in-house proprietary software development that makes us leaders in the field.

Stadco has long established partnerships with major European test houses and can provide project management support to co-ordinate activities by the FEA team and the test houses to facilitate physical testing correlation.