Shape Corporation

Volkswagen Ag

Amit Ashok Kulkarni

Daniel D Ralston

Darin Evans

David J Gorman

Vidya Revankar

Ngoc-Dang Nguyen

Kevin E Holdren

Kenneth R Bastien

Olaf Insel

Yassine Ghozzi

Alexander Besch

Oliver Knoke

A bumper system includes an injection molded energy absorber of polymeric material having hollow longitudinally-spaced lobes configured to crush and absorb energy during a pedestrian impact, and straps interconnecting adjacent lobes. The lobes are particularly sized and dimensioned, including potentially external ribs and/or apertures in corners, to provide a relatively uniform impact energy absorption during an impact stroke during crush of the shear walls of the lobes, such as within +/&#x2212;30% or more preferably within +/&#x2212;20% of a desired amount regardless of a specific location of impact, along a selected center portion of the energy absorber. A reason for the uniformity is to promote pedestrian safety regardless of the specific location where a pedestrian's leg strikes the energy absorber.

Energy absorber with lobes providing uniform pedestrian impact

A vehicle bumper system includes an elongated reinforcement beam for mounting to a vehicle frame and an energy absorber abutting a front surface of the reinforcement beam. The energy absorber includes longitudinally-elongated hollow crush lobes configured to crush and absorb energy upon a vehicle crash, the crush lobes including interconnected top, bottom, side and front walls. At least one opposing pair of the walls, such as the top and bottom walls, are elongated parallel a length of the beam to define enlarged areas that are generally unsupported, but the one pair of walls further include a plurality of spaced external ribs extending perpendicular to the length for stabilizing the enlarged areas.

Energy absorber with sidewall stabilizer ribs

Growing community of inventors

Grand Haven, MI, United States of America

Amit Ashok Kulkarni