Przyojski

I have seen this happen recently in a c7Z, nowhere near this kind of impact and the front of the frame cleaved clean off. so clean I thought that it was supposed to, or that it was just a crash bar.
Any info on if this is a design flaw or what?

rpoz06

I am a trauma surgeon in Little Rock and will leave it at that.

Second, please wear your seatbelts. We have created a new injury pattern in people who drive cars with airbags and don't wear their seatbelt.

When you crash and move forward from the momentum the airbag strikes you under the chin and literally distracts your head off you spinal cord creating a high spinal cord injury. Very few will survive this injury.

Thomasmoto

My wife and I have endured 2 accidents in 2 different Corvette's. An 11 GS and our 15 Z06. The GS was totaled, but protected us completely. Only a little sore from that one. And we were rear-ended in our current 15 Z06. Minimal damage to the rear bumper covers and rt tail light. In that one it was a late model SUV going 50 mph and he never hit his brakes. Again, car protected us but my mid thoracic spine still hurts 3 months later.

RandomTask

Stiffness (rigidity) /= strength.

EG. Concrete is very stiff but has very little strength in tension.

Przyojski

Agreed and understood, but this is not seen with previous models, etc, and I still found it surprising. Especially for it to cleave in an accident that didn't even deploy airbags.

It was such a clean break in two places it just seemed almost intentional, especially since other places were bent.

These were also seemingly "joints" so that would definitely play a roll in being a weak spot.

AZDoug

I have seen several C2 and C3 frames torn in half just behind the drivers seat.

There are pics all over the web, if you look.

Hit a tree or pole sideways at speed and the steel frame shears at the cross member like it was cut with a knife.

Doug

Przyojski

those frames are very very different though. The question stands, are the frames meant to split at these points in an accident, and absorb in different areas or different directions of impact.
eg: maybe if the front of a vette is clipped by someone running a red light, and the front of the frame cleaves off, less energy is transmitted to the corvette reducing how rapidly it is sent spinning off and the other car essentially just drives through it.
Obviously, the front is going to handle more stress along the length of the frame than it would coming from the side near a joint, but is this exaggerated by design?

sixthsense114

Przyojski

The front is designed to come off, apparently. its a bracketed sleeve on the frame. makes for a much easier fix.

C7-Z06

There have been lots of these cars in the salvage auction sites, with bumper rebars broke sheared off, then there are the ones that are sheared in front of where the upper A arm bolts up, and some where the frame has sheared at the firewall like this one in the original post. cars these days are designed to absorb deform not break like a brittle bone. GM got it wrong on this frame/chassis. IMO.

lpw016

OMG. I almost bought that car at the dealership. I posted a FS on that particular Z06 at Russell Chevrolet in Little Rock.

RIP and drive safe

boost2na

I'm no expert in car crashes, but I'm very familiar with aircraft crashes and there's a reason they're always so much worse - speed. I agree with the fire, EMT, police, and medical guys - if they were doing something like 130 MPH and went from that speed to 0 in 0.01 seconds, it's like Bill Paxton said in Aliens, "game over man, game over". A few years back there was an incident in a C6 that was pretty bad too. I think a lady was driving one off the lot, hit triple digit speeds, crashed, and the car just disintegrated. It would happen in anything. If you could get an armored truck well into the triple digits (say 150 MPH) and hit a bunch of large, old trees, the force is so powerful it wouldn't make much of a difference. Really sad, praying for the family.

Przyojski

I think in some cases, breaking may be the ideal thing to happen. It all depends on the direction of the impact. In a situation like the one i described, front end getting clipped, it would be best if the car DIDN'T absorb the impact but rather said good-bye front end. In the accident I watched the frame DID absorb the front end impact that was directed toward the cabin, just not as much of the lateral force, which in turn just reduced how much the car spun around after impact.

Absorbing the impact is only really ideal if the impact is directed toward the cabin. Otherwise you are just making the vehicle have a greater acceleration, in turn giving the occupants bodies a greater rate of acceleration.

Maybe GM got it right....

Mr. Gizmo

Too Much Money + Too Little Brains = Tragedy ^