Crush Measurement with PhotoModeler

The depth of crush for a particular vehicle involved in a crash has been shown to correspond to Equivalent Barrier Speed (EBS) of the vehicle at time of impact. By measuring crush and combining this with knowledge about how the car deforms (i.e. how stiff it is) one can estimate the speed of the vehicle at impact - which may be a crucial piece of evidence.

There are two ways PhotoModeler can be used to measure crush: a) using your own camera with access to the vehicle, and b) from photographs taken by a third party where the vehicle no longer exists. Examples of both techniques are given below.

Also see the SAE papers on crush measurement on the Case Studies page. In addition, if you want to watch a video describing some of these techniques, our Crushed Vehicle Mapping tutorial on the tutorials page is a good place.

You may also be interested in getting exemplar models to complete your crush study. Lightpoint Data, a PhotoModeler Ambassador, provides such models.

Crush Analysis Examples

  • Side Crush
  • from unknown photos
  • VEHICLE 3d model

Modeling of existing and undamaged vehicles is common as well. This type of modeling is done for obtaining an exemplar model for crush comparison (as in above example), or for building models suited to animation and simulation. This example's goal is to obtain a life-like model (courtesy of DCM Technical Services).

In PhotoModeler one adds surfaces to the computed 3D points and then photographic data from the same photos used for modeling can be used to 'texture' the model and improve its realism considerably.

The animation was created right in PhotoModeler but the model can be exported easily in a number of different formats that popular animation programs understand.