Journal of Auto-vehicle Safety Association ISSN:2005-9396(Print) 자동차안전학회지

Recently hydrogen fuel cell buses have been deployed for the public transportations. In order to introduce buses fueled by hydrogen successfully, the research results of hydrogen bus safety should be discussed and investigated significantly. Especially, Korean government drives research in terms of various applications of hydrogen energy to replace the conventional fuel energy resources and to improve the safety evaluation. Thus it is necessary to examine vehicle crashworthiness under side impact loadings. This study was focused on the simulation result evaluation of full bus model and simplified bus model with hydrogen fuel tank module and mounting system located below floor structure due to the significance of bus side impact accidents. The finite element models of hydrogen bus, fuel tank system and side impact moving barrier were set up and simulation results reported model performance and result comparison of two side impact models. Computational results and research discussion showed the conceptual side impact framework to evaluate hydrogen bus crashworthiness.