One of the most harmful of two-vehicle crashes to passenger vehicle occupants is when the front of passenger vehicle hits and passes underneath the rear of truck. It resulted in 23% of total death from two-vehicle crashes with a truck in 2018 based on data from the U.S. Department of transportation’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). To reduce the violence of such accidents, the rear underrun protective device (RUPD) is installed on the rear of heavy goods vehicle (HGV), to cause the crumple zone of the impacting passenger vehicle absorbing the impact energy and prevent the impacting passenger vehicle from getting crushed under the HGV. This article demonstrates an approach to design the RUPD based on design inputs, including the structural strength, the local RUPD builders, and the variation of commercial HGV types in Thailand. The morphological analysis is applied along with brainstorming among design team, local manufacturers, and government agency, to generate a total of 72 potential RUPD solutions. In this study, three potential RUPD designs were proposed as RUPD prototypes for different HGV types to investigate their structural strength in terms of strain, deformation, and maximum reaction force. The explicit dynamic finite element (FE) method was implemented to accurately simulate the structural strength of the RUPD prototype since its results were validated by the real test of full-scale prototype with reference to the UN R58 standard. From the results, all proposed RUPD prototypes satisfied the UN R58 standard and are not violated by test loads at all relevant positions. In addition, different designs of the protective beam, which was found to be the main load-bearing resstive component of RUPD, were proposed. Their structural strength and energy-absorbing capability were examined by FE simulation to allow local RUPD builders to have alternatives for RUPD fabrication depending on their resources and applications. Besides, the proposed design approach in this study could be further applied as a guideline design for other RUPD types in a commercial scale.

两车相撞对乘用车乘员最有害的一种情况是当乘用车的前部撞击并从卡车后部下方经过时。根据美国交通部死亡分析报告系统 (FARS) 的数据，2018 年两车与卡车相撞的死亡人数占总死亡人数的 23%。为降低此类事故的暴力程度，重型货车（HGV）后部安装了后部防钻撞保护装置（RUPD），使碰撞乘用车的防撞区吸收碰撞能量，防止碰撞乘用车发生碰撞。在 HGV 下被压碎。本文展示了一种基于设计输入的 RUPD 设计方法，包括结构强度、当地 RUPD 建造商以及泰国商用 HGV 类型的变化。形态分析与设计团队、当地制造商和政府机构之间的头脑风暴一起应用，以生成总共 72 个潜在的 RUPD 解决方案。在这项研究中，提出了三种潜在的 RUPD 设计作为不同 HGV 类型的 RUPD 原型，以研究它们在应变、变形和最大反作用力方面的结构强度。使用显式动态有限元（FE）方法准确模拟RUPD原型的结构强度，其结果参考UN R58标准通过全尺寸原型的实际测试验证。从结果来看，所有提议的 RUPD 原型都满足 UN R58 标准，并且在所有相关位置都没有受到测试载荷的影响。此外，不同设计的保护梁，被发现是 RUPD 的主要承重阻力部件，被提出。通过有限元模拟检查它们的结构强度和能量吸收能力，以允许当地的 RUPD 建造者根据他们的资源和应用选择 RUPD 制造。此外，本研究中提出的设计方法可以进一步应用于商业规模的其他 RUPD 类型的指导设计。