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Volvo's New Safety Centre Opens

29 March 2000

Volvo's New Safety Centre Opens; Offers Unique, State-of-the-Art Testing Capabilities

    GOTHENBURG, Sweden, March 29 Volvo's $100 million
investment in automotive safety is now open and in use, helping to develop
safer cars and to preserve Volvo's role as a leader in automotive safety.

    Some of the most advanced elements are described below.

    --    The new Volvo Cars Safety Centre has the world's most advanced crash
          barrier, allowing for uniquely more effective measurement of the
          forces exerted on a car.  The new barrier will make it possible for
          Volvo to do much more realistic crash testing, and learn how to
          build lighter cars without sacrificing safety.  Additionally, the
          new barrier is versatile enough to allow a far higher number of
          crash tests can be performed on a complete car -- up to ten per week
          compared with three today.

    --    Virtual tests in a new NEC SX-4 supercomputer pave the way for
          faster development of new Volvo car models with even greater
          precision.  Volvo's supercomputer capacity allows for a crash
          situation to be simulated any number of times, swiftly and
          inexpensively, at different speeds with different types of safety
          system and different body sizes for the occupants.  Six simulated
          full-car crashes can be carried out per 24-hour period.  The
          computation models make it possible for Volvo Cars to determine the
          car's safety characteristics at an early stage in the development
          process -- long before any physical prototypes are available for
          crash tests.

    --    With the help of a new, advanced, moving test track carried on air
          cushions, crashes between two cars moving towards each other can be
          carried out from all imaginable angles and speeds.  The ability to
          combine two tracks -- one of which can be moved -- makes the
          laboratory at the Volvo Safety Centre unique in the automotive
          world.  The movable track can be turned by up to 90 degrees,
          allowing car-to-car impacts from full frontal to right-angled from
          the side.  The majority of the $100 million investment has gone into
          new technology to make crash tests as realistic as possible.

    --    The main benefit of crash simulation compared with full-scale crash
          tests is that it is possible to repeat the same crash over and over.
          Minor adjustments to such things as the function of the safety belt
          or the airbag activation can be carried out between each test,
          making it possible for Volvo Cars' crash analysts to gain greater
          insight into how these and other protection systems should be
          designed.  Volvo's unique new crash simulator produces authentic
          reactions previously unavailable in simulation, including the
          "pitch" that occurs when a car tilts forwards during collision and
          the deformation of the bulkhead between the engine compartment and
          the passenger compartment in a severe frontal impact.

    --    With the help of a number of new, specially built rigs, studies can
          be conducted, altered and repeated to discover what happens when
          parts of the human body collide with parts of the interior or
          exterior of a car.  For example, one rig tests the design of a
          steering wheel and its direct bearing on safety.  Another rig
          consists of a door panel fitted on a swing which hits a test dummy
          in the car seat at a predetermined force, resembling the intrusion
          of a door panel in a side collision.