Multibody and Finite Element Models for the Design of Motorcyclist’s Roadside Protections

In Europe, road accidents represent one of major causes of death. Huge number of fatalities happens in two wheel motor vehicles, mainly in those due to crashes against guardrails and others safety structures and obstacles, which represents besides the social problem, an economical issue associated with this type of fatalities that causes a spending of millions of euros by the governments.

Because of the main point of reducing in 50% the road accidents fatalities in European Union, it becomes fundamental to develop protections to avoid the major injuries and to increase the protection of the motorcyclists. This development can be taken by using commercial software like Madymo [

1

] in case of multibody systems [

2

] or LS-Dyna to finite elements studies. In this article, different kind of road side protections are modeled and analyzed, such as the conventional steel system, “Ecran Motard”, concrete barriers or usual guardrails posts protections [

3

],[

4

] and they are tested to ensure the safety conditions of each one. In order to determine the injuries risk, biomechanical parameters (such as HIC - Head Injuries Criteria, chest and pelvis accelerations, etc) [

5

] are calculated and compared with the limit values. The main target of this study is to determine the best geometry to ensure the best protection of motorcyclists in the cases of collisions against roadside protection systems in typical crash characteristics.