Crush and Conservation of Energy Analysis: Toward a Consistent Methodology

This paper clarifies the relationship between the absorbed crush energy and the dissipated crush energy and explores the use of each in crush and conservation of energy analysis. There is inconsistency and confusion in the literature of accident reconstruction regarding when crush analysis and conservation of energy analysis should use the absorbed crush energy and when it should use the dissipated crush energy. It is demonstrated in this paper that crush analysis calls for the absorbed energy, while conservation of energy analysis calls for the dissipated energy. However, this paper also shows that the equations of crush analysis and conservation of energy analysis can be written in terms of either the absorbed or the dissipated crush energies, since the absorbed and dissipated energies are related through the coefficient of restitution (when friction-type energy losses are assumed negligible). The assumptions of crush analysis are explored in order to develop a consistent approach.