Use of superplastic tin lead alloy to simulate the behavior of engineering materials in design of systems for occupant protection during car accident collision

In every collision, the collision energy and forces developed during an accident have to be absorbed by someway to protect car occupants and reduce car damage. Different systems and devices have been designed and used for this purpose. The aim is to dissipate the kinetic energy irreversibly rather than convert it and store it elastically. Devices used are usually one shot items i.e. once having been deformed, they are discarded and replaced. The development and detail design of these mechanical devices and systems for dissipating the collision energy in controlled and predetermined rate is a prerequisite. The literature on these devices is voluminous but most of it deals with the problem under quasi-static rate condition due to the unavailability of equipment and complication of the testing under dynamic or high strain rate conditions. It is now well-established that the behavior of materials under dynamic loading is somewhat different from their behavior under the quasi-static condition. Therefore, a material having a rate sensitivity in the quasi-static range will be very useful in simulating the behavior of engineering materials at the high strain rate condition. In this paper superplastic tin-lead alloy which is rate sensitive in the range from 10/sup -2/ to 10/sup -1/ Is was used to simulate the behavior of steel and other engineering materials, in absorbing the collision energy by allowing a cylindrical billet to be extruded through circular cross sectional die with a high extrusion ratio. The testing was carried out at three different strain rates, the force and energy consumed in the plastic work for the extrusion process were determined experimentally and compared with those predicted from the mechanical behavior of the alloy at the corresponding strain rate using Johnson formulae for forward extrusion. The experimental results were found in good agreement with the predicted values. (author)