Author(s)

B. Ferrer, S. Ivorra, R. Irles & D. Mas

Abstract

Several real size car crash experiments have been carried out. In these experiments low velocity impact against a building column has been tested. The experiments have been carried out on a reinforced concrete column with a rectangular section. The test was developed in an external area; therefore, both the compression load and the boundary conditions in the column had to be applied with a special device. However, the use of a real car forced one to adopt some design conditions in this device. Furthermore, to avoid the need of a driver in the car, an inclined plane and a mechanical guiding system was used. In this paper the device, procedures and instrumentation used in these experiments are described. Five experiments were done with this system and their results are presented here. Keywords: real size, car crash, experiment, low velocity, impact, concrete column. 1 Motivation The accidental actions due to the horizontal impact of a car against a building have been included in the most recent building codes, such as EUROCODE 1 [1–3], \“Minimum design loads for building and other structures” [4], the \“International Building Code” [5] or \“DIN 1055-9: Actions on structures. Accidental actions” [6]. All of these codes use an equivalent static load (ESL) to represent the effects of an impact.

Keywords

real size, car crash, experiment, low velocity, impact, concrete column