Development of an Equivalent Analysis Model of PVB Laminated Glass for TRAM Crash Safety Analysis

Abstract

This study focuses on an equivalent model of Polyvinyl Butyral (PVB) laminated glass to simulate the Head Injury Criterion (HIC) when a pedestrian collides with a TRAM. To simulate the collision behavior that occurs when a pedestrian’s head collides with PVB laminated glass, a comparison was made between the results of the widely used PLC model for PVB laminated glass modeling and an actual dynamic head impact test. The material properties of the tempered glass and PVB film used in the PLC and equivalent models were obtained via four-point bending tests and tensile tests, respectively. The proposed equivalent model is developed by assigning the thickness, material properties, and positional information of each layer in the multilayer PLC model to the integration points of the shell element. The results of the equivalent analysis model were found to accurately simulate the collision behavior when compared with the results of both the dynamic head impact test and the PLC model. Moreover, the analysis cost improved to approximately 15% of that of the traditional PLC model.