Yogi
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Michael
- Joined
- May 12, 2020
- Threads
- 10
- Messages
- 379
- Reaction score
- 526
- Location
- Port Dover, Ontario, Canada
- Vehicle(s)
- 2019 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon
- Occupation
- GM, P.Log, CITT, 310T
In my world (attached picture) ... it's not pretty
The term "crumple zone" does not inherently mean crushing from the front to the back in cascading orders of severity. A crumple zone refers more to the act of moving force from one location to another, and avoiding the interior cabin area, which is exactly as you describe what happened in your accident. The force of the collision was spread and transferred around the outside of the body to the back of the body, and from there it starts to travel forward through the interior body panels. What did not, and should not, happen was the frame crushing. That is just bad engineering from the get-go when that happens.
Vehicles with IFS enjoy the luxury of being able to shed large parts of the vehicle to dissipate force, which is why in violent collisions you see them blown all over the road, yet people walk away from them.
Framed vehicles must do it another way. They use body panels, and those panels body crush individually as the force of the collision travels through them.
In class 8 vehicles, with which I am most familiar, yet the concept remains the same, when we take a forceful blow to the front end, we will lose, and in this order, the bumper, the hood, the bunk back panel, the bunk roof and sides from the top down, the cab roof, the cab doors, then the cab structure itself. If forceful enough, while the impact is doing all of this damage it also blowing a 3,000 lb engine and 700 lb transmission out from between the frame rails and underneath the cab, taking the front axle, fuel tanks, and rear ends with them as the go. The very last thing to go is for the frame to bend, and when that happens, it usually ejects the cab structure. At the end of the day ... drivers usually live.
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