The destructive form of automobile testing may soon be replaced by a virtual car crash testing tech. Crash tests are performed by New Car Assessment Program(NCAP) organizations around the world in order to ensure safe design standards. These tests study the crashworthiness and crash compatibility for various types of automobiles.
The crash tests carried out with actual cars endure damage through specifically designed accident scenarios, which often leave the vehicle broken for life. Hence, automakers have developed a new virtual tech which will eliminate the cost of crash test equipments and the bills of crashed vehicles.
Most of the vehicles and their parts are designed digitally, therefore using the same computer aided design (CAD) software several potential crash scenarios can be simulated on a computer. Further results can be obtained by running the digitally rendered cars into the software-created crash environments.
The new virtual crash tests are repeatable, peelable and variable. The crashes can be repeated without additional costs and setup time. Any portion of the cars can be peeled out or made invisible, in order to observe a new sub-assembly perform in a particular crash scenario. Also, the car components can be redesigned and tested again which may have failed in previous tests.
In development at the moment the virtual crash test technology can provide results accurate up to 90%. This virtual crash test tech has a lot to offer but is still away from actual use.
Check the video below for more info on the new Virtual Crash test tech.
source: Cnet
And soon we will see Volkswagen (or someone else) cheat at this as well…