Automotive Accident Reconstruction : Practices and Principles

This fully updated edition presents practices and principles applicable for the reconstruction of automobile and commercial truck crashes. Like the First Edition, it starts at the very beginning with fundamental principles, information sources, and data gathering and inspection techniques for accident scenes and vehicles. It goes on to show how to analyze photographs and crash test data. The book presents tire fundamentals and shows how to use them in spreadsheet-based reverse trajectory analysis. Such methods are also applied to reconstructing rollover crashes. Impacts with narrow fixed objects are discussed. Impact mechanics, structural dynamics, and conservation-based reconstruction methods are presented. The book contains a comprehensive treatment of crush energy and how to develop structural stiffness properties from crash test data. Computer simulations are reviewed and discussed.

Extensively revised, this edition contains new material on side pole impacts. It has entirely new chapters devoted to low-speed impacts, downloading electronic data from vehicles, deriving structural stiffness in side impacts, and incorporating electronic data into accident reconstructions

Donald E. Struble holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees from California Polytechnic State University, Stanford University, and Georgia Institute of Technology, respectively, all in engineering with an emphasis on structural mechanics. Dr Struble served as an Assistant Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cal Poly–San Luis Obispo, Manager of the Research Safety Vehicle program and Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research at Minicars, Inc. in Goleta California, President of Dynamic Science, Senior Associate at Cromack Engineering Associates, and Senior Engineer at Collision Safety Engineering in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr Struble has worked in automotive crashworthiness since 1972 and in accident reconstruction since 1983. He is coholder of a patent on side impact air bags and was the editor of Advances in Side Airbag Systems, published by SAE International in 2005. He is a member of SAE, AAAM, and Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. Formerly, he was the President of Struble–Welsh Engineering in San Luis Obispo, California, from which he is now retired.

John D. Struble holds BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizona and the Georgia Institute of Technology, respectively. He specializes in automotive and heavy truck accident investigation and reconstruction, and he also has expertise in vehicle structural performance, restraint system analysis, and rollover initiation. Within the area of accident reconstruction, Struble is proficient in momentum, crush energy, and simulation analyses in a wide variety of crash modes. He is also proficient in the extraction of electronic data from accident-involved vehicles and the incorporation of that information into accident reconstruction analyses. Struble served as a Safety Standards Engineer for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Senior Engineer at Struble-Welsh Engineering prior to joining Exponent, Inc., where he is a Principal in the Vehicle Engineering Practice.