Crumple zone

The crumple zone is a structural feature mainly of automobiles. Crumple zones have also been incorporated into railcars in recent years.They are designed to absorb the energy from the impact during an accident by controlled deformation.Crumple zones work by managing crash energy, absorbing it within the outer parts of the vehicle, rather than being directly transmitted to the occupants, while also preventing intrusion into or deformation of the passenger cabin. This better protects car occupants against injury. This is achieved by controlled weakening of sacrificial outer parts of the car, while strengthening and increasing the rigidity of the inner part of the body of the car, making the passenger cabin into a 'safety cell', by using more reinforcing beams and higher strength steels. Impact energy that does reach the 'safety cell', is spread over as wide an area as possible to reduce its deformation.When a vehicle and all its contents, including passengers and luggage are travelling at speed, they have inertia which means that they will want to continue forward with that direction and speed (Newton's first law of motion). In the event of a sudden deceleration of a rigid framed vehicle due to impact, unrestrained vehicle contents will continue forwards at their previous speed due to inertia, and impact the vehicle interior, with a force equivalent to many times their normal weight due to gravity. The purpose of crumple zones is to slow down the collision and to absorb energy, to reduce the difference in speeds between the vehicle and its occupants.