The Midwest Roadside Safety Facility (MwRSF) has received an update for the Caresoft Global donation of access to its proprietary vehicle benchmarking database through a web portal and is now offering access to interested faculty, students and researchers at UNL.
MwRSF can provide access for any UNL user to the upgraded Iceberg 3.0 platform. Interested UNL faculty, students and researchers should contact Cody Stolle, MwRSF assistant director, at cstolle2@unl.edu, and provide your university email address, your full name, and your position.
The Caresoft Iceberg database offers a rare glimpse into complete vehicle assembly for multiple makes and models by collecting material properties, assembly details, component information, and connection details for every component included in the Teardown library. This includes original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts, material properties and vehicle wiring and safety systems for myriad vehicles and digital twin and 3D part data for select vehicles.
Access to these data typically is challenging and expensive to acquire. Having it available can open the doors for research as well as student interest in automotive engineering, assembly, and optimization processes.
Currently, some of the projects MwRSF researchers have undertaken include:
A National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) project to design surrogate, reusable “bogie” vehicles for analyzing the crashworthiness of breakaway hardware such as luminaires, sign supports, and work zone traffic control devices. To date, the crashworthiness of these devices was evaluated only using full-scale crash testing to ensure that device fracture or release would not intrude into the occupant compartment or impose unacceptable accelerations or occupant risk. The Caresoft Iceberg suite is being used to develop vehicle frames and attach OEM components to represent the vehicle shape and still inexpensively and easily replicate the dynamics of an impacting vehicle.
The MwRSF Pooled Fund continues to explore electric vehicle (EV) crashes into roadside safety hardware. EV chasses and suspensions are stronger and vary compared to traditional gasoline vehicle counterparts, and the increased weight, energy, and structural differences may pose safety or vehicle containment problems with some of the most common roadside barriers. Caresoft vehicle models and vehicle data are being used to evaluate the assembly, sizes, material properties, and connections of critical structural components as vehicle-to-barrier simulation and crash data analysis are executed.
During the summer of 2023, Samantha White, a MwRSF and mechanical and materials engineering undergraduate student, will travel to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) to expand electric vehicle safety research started at MwRSF under the Nebraska Center for Energy Sciences Research (NCESR) Darrell J. Nelson Summer Undergraduate Internship in Energy Sciences Research internship.
Cooperative research with transportation agencies in the Department of Defense to ensure that military entry control facilities are protected from potential threats using vehicles as weapons. MwRSF researchers are evaluating vehicle dynamics, handling, controls, and impacts into roadside barriers which protect military facilities as well as exploring rising threats from different types of vehicles with unique risk factors.