The GW National Crash Analysis Center (NCAC), housed at GW’s Virginia Science and Technology Campus in Ashburn, Va., has been named as one of Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center new research partners.
On Tuesday, Toyota announced three new research partnerships and four new projects aimed at advancing the development of innovative safety technologies across the automotive industry. The new projects are focused on the continued development of advanced crashworthiness modeling.
“We will be working to develop computer simulation models of the THOR advanced anthropomorphic test device (test dummy) for multidirectional vehicle crashworthiness applications,” said Steve Kan, NCAC director. “This model will allow researchers and engineers to simulate real-world crash scenarios and assess occupant injury risks. As a result of this research, for the first time we will be able to use computer simulation to evaluate real-world vehicle collisions.”
GW’s research partner, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), will be responsible for testing dummy materials and components and providing the test data to the NCAC. GW researchers will then utilize the test data for model verification and validation.
Chartered in 1992, NCAC seeks to improve transportation safety by expanding researchers’ knowledge about crashworthiness, developing and sharing the detailed vehicle and roadside hardware models, and leading efforts to apply computer simulation tools to enable researchers to study the complex interactions associated with transportation safety and security.
“We look forward to further expanding our talent-shared research model and to helping advance the development of safety technologies that can benefit all of society,”said Chuck Gulash, senior executive engineer at the Toyota Technical Center and CSRC director.