Automakers are always looking to improve vehicle safety, but now that they’ve done most of the easy things, it keeps getting harder. CarBuzz has just found a patent from Volkswagen that would take a part its cars already use and implement it in a different way to help cars crash more safely.
It would redirect your engine in a crash, helping dissipate energy instead of sending it to you.
This Pendulum Swings Toward Safety
2014 VW Golf GTI I4 engine topVolkswagen
If you’ve looked under the hood of a front-drive car, you’ve probably seen what’s normally called a dogbone mount. The mounts are used at the top and bottom of different engines, and they help hold the engine in place against the firewall or the radiator support.
The proper name for these supports is a “pendulum support” or “pendulum rod.” They’re named not because they swing back and forth, but because they look like the rod used between the mechanism and the pendulum weight on a clock.
In the patent, Volkswagen describes using one of these supports under and behind the engine, where it works as a lower engine mount. The support would have a bushing or bearing at the end where it attaches to the car, but a more rigid bolted mount on the side where it attaches to the engine.
This will sound a lot like every other dogbone engine mount, but the difference is how it is applied. And that only one side uses a rubber bushing or bearing. Look at the two different part designs, and they’re all but identical. But it’s the details that make all the difference here.
Could A Few Bends Or Some Weld Make A Car Safer?
Volkswagen Engine MountVolkswagen
Volkswagen’s new support would fail in a very different way in a crash. With the old part, the support could fail in a random way during an impact. The engine will move unpredictably, instead of helping with crash energy.
The new part would fail in more specific ways thanks to the clever design of the part. In its example, VW shows the engine being pushed rearward and bending the support. It moves further rearward in the car without moving upward. It can actually be directed downward, which helps absorb more energy without pushing into the passenger compartment.
More importantly, it moves and bends its mountings in ways that absorb energy in a more controlled way. It’s a way that prevents the energy of the crash from being transmitted into the cabin through the subframe and other components.
The design lets the vehicle take more of the hit, which is a big boost for safety in a front-end crash. It also lets Volkswagen design to a lower limit where the mount will not deform, so that minor crashes will not end in expensive damage the way they could with the existing mount.
CarBuzz Insight – Why This Matters:
Dekra Volkswagen Golf MKII Crash TestDEKRA
Improving crash safety is hard, but the results are huge. Especially if you’re the one in the car. Anything that can improve survivability is a very big deal, and doing it without reinventing the wheel makes it doubly so.
If Volkswagen could make vehicles safer just by switching one part, that would be wonderful for its next generation of owners. It’s an invention you would probably see plenty of variations on in vehicles from other brands as well, in a very short time.
Patent filings do not guarantee the use of such technology in future vehicles and are often used exclusively as a means of protecting intellectual property. Such a filing cannot be construed as confirmation of production intent.
Source: DPMA
