Engine Separation from Vehicle During Crash

General questions on the SMAC, msmac3D and other Collision Simulation programs
MSI
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Engine Separation from Vehicle During Crash

Post by MSI »

From Facebook NAPARS page:
Today's featured crash: Engine in the Kitchen (see link above for full information).
  • Back in 2020, a dude stole a 2017 Jag in Baton Rouge, but the owner could tell police right where it was with GPS tracking. They found it and chased it. On a straight-ish section of highway, doofus crashed on the left side of the road, scraped the trees, and came back across the road, possibly engaging more trees, and threw the engine out of the car and through someone's back door. The Jag only went about 140 feet past the trees, and came out of it looking pretty good, except for the nose. The friend who pointed this crash out to me asked "How fast do you have to be going to throw an engine?". I suggested that if he gave me a few exemplar cars and several tens of thousands of dollars, I could at least get him in the ballpark, but that I expected it was lower than we might imagine. The only big things that have to break are the engine mounts and bell housing, right? so maybe it's under 40mph DV, but the forces have to be...
    Engine in the kitchen.png
    Engine in the kitchen.png (526.94 KiB) Viewed 5170 times
[OUR RESPONSE}
  • We had crash from 1997 in Florida (with great documentation of evidence!) where due to a severe crash the engine separated as the vehicle spun to position of rest. We developed an 'engine separation' option for msmac to see when and why it separated. Worked nicely. That was back in 2D only SMAC days (20+ years ago!)...
    wonder what might be involved in activating that option to msmac3D since that one definitely has some interesting 3D components.
    This is what i love about this AR Network...brings up interesting and challenging crash circumstances that either remind me of older cases (i need to dig that one out!) and/or make for interesting challenges to figure out how to reconstruct/model the crash.
    Very interesting crash!
    Dug around and found a video from our reconstruction of that crash
    The following is a quick transfer from a VHS tape created some 20+ years ago (with some quick edits to shorten)