Abstract
Commercial motor vehicles crash investigation and reconstruction technology is a great interest to vehicle design engineers. It is of interest to identify the cause behind heavy vehicle crashes for safer designs. Regulatory agencies like the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) is concerned with the public safety. To this aim, this thesis seeks to research this area using state of the art technology and analysis methods based on experimental results and applicable to commercial vehicle crashes for reconstruction purposes. Northwestern University Public Safety department has been a leader in developing the theory in vehicle crashes for passenger cars and the field of heavy vehicles. Heavy vehicles field is still in need of further development. Also, The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, NHTSA, a government agency has been conducting tests of vehicles of several manufacturers and models to determine crash factors and determine heavy commercial vehicle behavior under collisions. CVSA (Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance) is another entity, which is a non-profit organization. It is establishing safety standards for motor vehicles, drivers by providing necessary education and training programs. For this reason, already existing methods and data allows a base structure for developing new methods. Important factors for reconstruction of heavy commercial vehicles have been identified and studied. With the use of already available data, a detailed approach of analysis for important crash factors has been developed.