I’m counting on enough people seeing the light. I know that underride is an engineering problem with engineering solutions. And I have been suitably impressed with learning that there are engineers who look to God’s amazing creation for some of those answers.
Like sheep HORNS and honeycomb to stop cars!
“I love Thee, O Lord my strength.”
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge;
My shield and the HORN of my salvation. . . Psalm 18:1-2
“The sheep horn presents outstanding mechanical properties of impact resistance and energy absorption, which suits the need of the vehicle bumper design, but the mechanism behind this phenomenon is less investigated. The microstructure and mechanical properties of the sheep horn of Small Tailed Han Sheep (Ovis aries) living in northeast China were investigated in this article. The effect of sampling position and orientation of the sheep horn sheath on mechanical properties were researched by tensile and compression tests.
“Meanwhile, the surface morphology and microstructure of the sheep horn were observed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The formation mechanism of the mechanical properties of the sheep horn was investigated by biological coupling analysis. The analytical results indicated that the outstanding mechanical properties of the sheep horn are determined by configuration, structure, surface morphology and material coupling elements.
“These biological coupling elements make the sheep horn possess super characteristics of crashworthiness and energy absorption through the internal coupling mechanism. We suppose that these findings would make a difference in vehicle bumper design.” Microsc. Res. Tech. 79:664–674, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. also Microstructure and mechanical properties of sheep horn.
More in this research article:
“The rear under-run protection devices (RUPD) could prevent the entry of a small vehicle under rear side of the heavy truck, and decrease the injuries and deaths when the accident occurs. In this paper, a new concept of the mechanical design of heavy truck RUPD is presented based on the bio-inspired method, by analyzing the structure of a kind of sheep horn, which has good capacities of energy absorption and structural strength. Firstly, the space geometry characteristic of the sheep horn in macroscopic view was analyzed. Then the research was focused on its mechanical property, and the microstructure of the horn sample was observed by the scanning electron microscope (SEM). Based on the test results, the structure characteristic and force condition of the horn were discussed. A new RUPD structure was designed in both macro and micro levels using bionic principle. The superior mechanics performance of the sheep horn was transplanted into the new RUPD. Finally, the finite element model for the new RUPD, which is inspired from the sheep horn, was established and analyzed. Simulation results showed that the protection device had better strength characteristic and could effectively protect car occupants in under-run accidents. Therefore, with the remarkable strength performance and simple structure, the bionic RUPD shows the promise for practical application. “
Reminds me of the 2015-16 Virginia Tech Senior Design Underride Team; they came up with a whole slew of creative ideas for a rear guard (including honeycomb): https://annaleahmary.com/tag/virginia-tech-dream-team/
Oh, look, I found some other engineering students who got patents in their name from their senior projects! Let’s harness all that amazing creative ingenuity, in young and not-so-young engineers, to save lives!
