Author(s)

A. Agyei-Agyemang, G. Y. Obeng, P. Y. Andoh

Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana.
Technology Consultancy Centre, College of Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana.

To mitigate the degree of damage to passengers caused by automobile collisions, a friction damper was built and used in experimental tests to test its effectiveness in impact energy attenuation. The study revealed that energy absorption capacity of a bumper can be improved with the addition of a friction damper. The results revealed that the addition of the friction damper to an automobile bumper to give a bumper-damper system could attenuate about 32.5 % more energy than with the bumper alone. It can be concluded that the effectiveness of automobile bumpers to withstand impact of vehicles by absorbing the kinetic energy from the impact can be improved with the use of a passive friction damper. That is, a passive friction damper system could be used to attenuate more road vehicle impact energy in collisions.

Vehicle Bumper, Equivalent Energy Speed (EES), Impact Attenuation, Passive Damper

Agyei-Agyemang, A. , Obeng, G. and Andoh, P. (2014) Experimental Evaluation of the Attenuation Effect of a Passive Damper on a Road Vehicle Bumper. World Journal of Engineering and Technology, 2, 192-200. doi: 10.4236/wjet.2014.23021.