Low-Energy Crash Sled

I am currently working as an undergraduate research assistant in UWaterloo's Forming & Crash Lab, under the supervision of professor John Magliaro. I am working on designing a high-velocity, low-energy impact sled for testing lightweight materials and structures.

I created a calculator in Excel to determining the impact energy and velocity for the purpose of component sizing. I'm currently designing the sled in SolidWorks and I plan on simulating the sled performance using LS-DYNA prior to manufacturing and comissioning.