ANCAP crash test demonstration

The Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP), established in 1992, is a body supported by state governments and motoring associations around the country.

Taking crash safety beyond the lowest common denominator of ADR homologation, ANCAP purchases new cars to provide independent crash safety data for consumers and tests cars according to the criteria established by the European equivalent, EuroNCAP.

This allows ANCAP to draw on test results for any number of cars available in both European markets and Australia, without the additional expense of crash-testing those cars locally. Cars not tested by EuroNCAP (such as Subaru and the local manufacturers), are tested at ANCAP's 'Crashlab' facility at Huntingwood in Sydney's west.

The three-year old Crashlab facility is of pivotal importance to the organisation's ability to assess vehicles scientifically, for their real-world ability to withstand high-speed impacts.

Different permutations of vehicular impact can be tested, including side impacts with a mobile sled, a pole test (in which the car is slid sideways into a hefty yellow pole) and vehicle-to-vehicle head-on collisions.

Attending the facility for a demonstration, the Carsales Network witnessed a Toyota Kluger (pictured) undergo a frontal-offset test, ploughing into a 120-tonne block at 64.3km/h.

The Kluger was outfitted with telemetry from the 'Hybrid 3' crash-test dummies and this telemetry could monitor and record up to 96 channels of information. Hybrid 3 dummies represent the 50 percentile human and weigh 78kg. There are specialised dummies for side impacts and all dummies are checked after every third crash.

ANCAP tells us that the on-board equipment which collects the data from the dummies can withstand a 100g impact.

Information is relayed from accelerometers in head, thorax and lower extremities of the dummies and, in addition, a compression transducer in the chest records rib deflection. A load cell trace from between the dummy's head and the base of the neck can typically register up to 300kg of axial G-force on the neck for a tenth of a second.

According to ANCAP, there are more sensors in the lower legs of the dummies than any other location, since protection for the lower section of the body is a weakness in current automotive design and statistically, severe leg injuries can be very debilitating. The upper torso and head are better protected by seatbelts and airbags these days, but legs are not afforded the same level of protection, as a general rule.

For the test, adult-sized dummies sat in the front and two child-size dummies occupied the rear seats.

The vehicle didn't run under its own power, being instead drawn along a track by a 500hp electric motor to achieve the precise impact speed of 64.3km/h. There's an emergency braking system that can stop the vehicle before impact, if staff deem it necessary.

At the end of the vehicle's tow, it impacted with a 120-tonne block, built to an EU standard in Britain and featuring a frangible aluminium honeycomb front.

The impact was captured by 12 high-speed cameras shooting at 1000FPS (frames per second) and one real-time camera. Toyota staff members were on hand at the request of ANCAP to review the process.

As the pictures here show, a considerable amount of preparation went into preparing the Kluger for its appointment with doom. The preparation is worth the while, since ANCAP can have the data ready to go within 10 minutes of the crash, but for reasons of protocol, ANCAP will not be telling us how the Kluger fared for a month or two yet.

To comment on this article click here