Charpy Impact Testing Machine in Modeling of Vehicle Frontal Crash with Street Lights

Real tests of a crash of a vehicle with lighting column are an expensive but necessary part of norm EN-126767:2008. During the design process of lighting columns, it is necessary to provide some modifications to receive sufficient safety class. To not repeat the experiments and to reduce the costs, numerical simulations are carried out, and when finally good results are received, a real crash test of a vehicle with real size streetlight can be performed. However, a truly challenging problem is the validation of the numerical models without experiments and making a good conclusion based on them. To investigate if something else than a real car crash experiments can be used, a small model of a Charpy Impact testing machine was created. The pendulum mass, the location of striking edge and radius of the striking edge can be altered in the model. The location of the mass center of the obstacle with which the crash is to be observed is also important. Experimental results from the testing machine were collected and compared with results from numerical simulations and conclusions were drawn.