ABSTRACT
Vehicles are made of engineering materials. Therefore, when they collide, one might expect to find the same applicable principles as those developed in a course on Strength of Materials, or Mechanics of Materials, to be applicable. Loads are applied to a structure, and displacements ensue. However, in a Strength of Materials course, certain restrictions are applied, which render most of the analytical techniques and results inapplicable to vehicle crashes. These restrictions, or assumptions, are categorized in Table 17.1.
