Crashworthy structures for future vehicle architecture of autonomous pods and heavy quadricycles on public roads: A review

With the development and deployment of lightweight vehicles to the market, inclusive of autonomous pods, a review of advanced crashworthy structures and the design methodology has been conducted as it is thought that super-lightweight vehicles may pose significant risk to the occupants if they are involved in a crash. It is suggested that tests should include oblique and multiple velocity impacts to cater for the effects of assisted driving systems of future vehicles. A review of current crash structures and design methodologies revealed that the most recent research do not cater to multiple crash scenarios, nor a shorter crush allowance, therefore resulting in poor crashworthiness performance. In addition, the arbitrary seat positioning shown in autonomous pods’ concepts vastly increases the risk to occupants. Greater enhancements to passive crashworthiness are imperative. To this end, functionally graded vehicle structures should be designed as it has been found that these can provide optimized solutions. Research into nonlinear optimization methods for computationally expensive problems will become central to this.