Development of simplified vehicle models for impact barrier

This work is the continuation of the European Joint Research Center project of developing structural FEM simplified vehicle models, to test in a fast and economic way the impact of such vehicles with various barriers. The project is meant to ensure protection of public spaces against hostile vehicle attacks. The Politecnico di Torino's role is to use a FEM explicit solver, LS-Dyna, to benchmark JRC's own software Europlexus, and to propose and study new simulation scenarios and improvements of the simplified models. The model studied in this thesis is the generic N1 vehicle that collides with a rigid bollard. Different sensitivity analysis have been performed to understand what is the effect of many individual parameters, such as the vehicle initial speed or the type of frame connections.