Simulations are a useful, but not always completely realistic alternative to the crash test: it is assumed, for instance, that welded and bonded connections never come apart in a collision. A new simulation also takes the failure of these connections into account. The number of joints is large: a medium-sized car is held together by approximately 5,000 spot welds and over 120 metres of bonded joints, as well as numerous rivets. If these burst, the obstacle can penetrate deeper into the car during a collision and magnify the danger for passengers. Researchers at the Fraunhofer- Institut for Materials Mechanics IWM in Freiburg have succeeded for the first time in simulating this reliably. “We have developed an alternative model for crash simulation which simulates the characteristics of spot welds – including their failure.”