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Expert Witness Services
ARA performs research and consulting services in a wide range of science and engineering disciplines. With this extensive background, ARA can perform support testing and analysis and provide experts with an international reputation for impartial advice.
ARA personnel in the Silicon Valley Office provide expert witness services for a wide range of problems including vehicle crash safety, industrial accident analysis, failure analysis, and evaluation of product design.
Typical Expert Services Include
- Initial no-cost telephone consultation to review case history and discuss relevant case issues and potential support approaches.
- Provide preliminary time and cost estimates.
- Perform supporting analyses, computer simulations, or experiments as appropriate.
- Identify and review relevant scientific research literature.
- Identify and recommend additional or alternate experts as appropriate.
- Provide both verbal updates and written reports as requested
- Prepare documentation and exhibits for deposition and/or trial.
- Provide expert testimony at trial.
Advances in numerical simulation techniques and computer capabilities have made high fidelity crash simulations an important tool for investigating crash safety. The Silicon Valley Office of ARA is actively involved in the model development and simulation of vehicles, occupants, and roadside hardware for a variety of crash applications. Vehicle crash models include both highway and rail cars. Occupant models include both the detailed modeling of anthropomorphic crash dummies used in vehicle crash testing and development of simpler models to simulate the occupant kinematics in collisions. Models of roadside structures are commonly developed for analysis of the vehicle collision response. Example simulations of a pickup colliding with a highway barrier and a restrained occupant subjected to a crash acceleration pulse are shown in the movies below.
In addition to analysis of vehicle and occupant crash safety, ARA staff in the Silicon Valley Office are actively involved in solving problems for a wide range of transportation safety issues. These range from the development of lightweight fragment barriers for protection from catastrophic aircraft engine failures to analysis of high-speed train aerodynamics and resulting pressure loads on adjacent vehicles.
Much of the research performed in the Silicon Valley office of ARA is related to the analysis of damage and failure of materials and structures. As a result, ARA has a unique combination of analytical and testing capabilities that can be applied to diverse problems in failure analysis and prevention.
The failure analysis program at ARA utilizes several areas of expertise, including fatigue, fracture analysis, and structural analysis. Many of the research projects in this field involve development and implementation of state-of-the-art constitutive and damage models into three-dimensional finite element codes that are used to evaluate the nonlinear failure behavior of structures.
Our experience includes a wide range of problems ranging from small scale failures of soldered connections in electronic components to the analysis of the aircraft impact damage to the World Trade Center towers. Details on our research expertise can be found by following the menu of links to other topic areas on this Web site in the left margin of this page.
For inquiries or comments, please contact:
Dr. Steven Kirkpatrick
Principal Engineer
e-mail: skirkpatrick@ara.com
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