This book explains how the car, as a structure, behaves in various types of accidents. In order to understand such behaviour the special features of car structures and the elementary physics of car collisions are explained. These ideas are the applied to roll-overs, side impacts, head-on collisions, etc. The reader is then shown how accidents can be analysed. The existing international rules for the design of car structures are also studied and it soon becomes apparent that these rules are inadequate in many respects. This is probably the main reason why racing drivers survive the severest accidents but many ordinary motorists do not survive crashes at one quarter of the speed.

This book is intended to help the reader understand impact phenomena as a focused application of diverse topics such as rigid body dynamics, structural dynamics, contact and continuum mechanics, shock and vibration, wave propagation and material modelling. It emphasizes the need for a proper assessment of sophisticated experimental/computational tools promoted widely in contemporary design. A unique feature of the book is its presentation of several examples and exercises to aid further understanding of the physics and mathematics of impact process from first principles, in a way that is simple to follow.

This second edition of Impact Engineering covers the dynamic analysis of structures undergoing small to large displacements, linear and nonlinear elastic material behavior to viscoplasticity, and the range of features of structural impact analysis. Individuals, as well as various governing bodies are concerned about protection against natural hazards, crash-type accidents, and terrorism- commonly referred to as "impact"- implying a rapid loading process. The book discusses the physics involved in such impact situations and incorporates analytical considerations as well as techniques to obtain and interpret experimental data and relevant numerical techniques. It also includes a chapter on scaling which is a relevant aspect when studying impact on large structures. This book will be useful for advanced students and professionals in civil and mechanical engineering as well as for students and researchers in applied physics and other relevant disciplines.

From the point of view of mechanics, this monograph systematically demonstrates the theory of plastic bending and its engineering applications; most of the contents of the book are based on the authors' research in the past decade. The monograph not only expounds the contributions of the authors to the fundamental theory of plastic bending, but also presents various applications of the theory in sheet metal forming, particularly in the analysis and prediction of springback and wrinkling of strips and plates subjected to bending or stamping. In addition to theoretical modelling, attention has also been paid to the development of related numerical methods; comparisons with experimental results are also presented.