pycrash 0.0.9

software tool for simulating vehicle motion and impacts based on fundamental physics and accident reconstruction techniques

Pycrash

Pycrash is a 2D mathematical model for simulating vehicle motion and vehicular impacts using a variety of approaches based on fundamental physics and published accident reconstruction techniques.

Planar Vehicle Motion

1. Single vehicle motion based on driver inputs (brake, throttle, steer)
2. Multi-vehicle motion with impact detection

• currently two vehicles, impact response based on two different approaches.

Impact Simulation

1. Single Degree of Freedom Model

• basic 2D collision with user defined stiffness values and braking effects
• no pre and post vehicle motion model use for impact severity calculations
• vehicle specific data is published for most vehicles by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• use published stiffness data such as Bonugli et al. or Lee et al. as examples

2. Sideswipe (in progress)
   • similar to previous model developed and validated by Funk et al.
   • improved to allow for driver inputs and flexible approach angles and contact locations
3. Impulse Momentum Planar Collision (in progress)

• model based on conservation of momentum incorporating inter-vehicular sliding developed by Carpenter et al.

Validation

• Single vehicle motion
  • physical testing
  • comparison with PC Crash
• Sideswipe
• Momentum
• validation data available in this repo

Modular Design

• Model calculations divided into modules to allow for future improvements
• Vehicle motion incorporates a modular linear tire model to determine slip condition based on weight shift from longitudinal and lateral acceleration.

Recommendations

• Download Python here and install required packages with pip from PyPi
• Pycrash is built around Pandas so you can manipulate the output of Pycrash functions directly with Pandas
• See Github repo for tutorials, Jupyter Notebooks and validation data