Modified kamal model for crumple zone behavior and control of active front bumper system for head-on collision

The development of an active front bumper system arose from the realization that the conventional bumpers are insufficient in absorbing impact energy during frontal collisions. This system utilizes magnetorheological elastomers (MREs), which can adjust its stiffness and damping properties in response to a magnetic field, thus significantly enhancing the impact absorption capabilities. The objective of this project is to model the dynamics of crumple zone, to model the impact behavior of the dualacting MRE damper and to develop a control strategy for active front bumper system that can reduce the effects of impact force due to collision. The methodology of this study is started with developing a 6 degree-of-freedom (DOF) vehicle crash model based on Kamal approach that represent the actual vehicle crumple zone. Next, the fabrication of dual-acting MRE damper takes place where the impact behavior of the MRE is modelled using 4th order polynomial to study for its force-displacement characteristics. Furthermore, the collision test rig is developed for evaluating the performance of the active front bumper system by conducting the experiment at different levels of collisions including light (83.25 kN), medium (333.02 kN) and hard (749.28 kN). Besides, the combination of proportional-integral-derivative controller (PID) and skyhook controller are chosen to be implemented in the active front bumper system. The proposed method has effectively reduced the impact of frontal collision by 63.78%, 44.16% and 30.06% in terms of acceleration. While, for displacement the reduction are 55.56%, 37.54% and 19.33% for light, medium and hard impact respectively.