Rationale for and Dimensions of Impact Surfaces for Biofidelity Tests of Different Sizes of Frontal and Side Impact Dummies

The biofidelity impact response corridors that were used to develop the Hybrid III family of dummies were established by scaling the various biofidelity corridors that were defined for the Hybrid III mid-size, adult male dummy. Scaling ratios for the responses of force, moment, acceleration, velocity, deflection, angle, stiffness and time were developed using dimensions and masses that were prescribed for the dummies. In addition, an elastic modulus ratio for bone was used to account for the differences between child and adult bone elastic properties. A similar method is being used by ISO/TC22/SC12/WG 5 to develop biofidelity guidelines for a family of side impact dummies based on scaling the biofidelity impact response corridors that are prescribed for WorldSID, a mid-size, adult male dummy. While the various biomechanical impact response requirements for the Hybrid III family of dummies and the WorldSID are documented in the literature, the scaling used to prescribe the dimensions of the impact surfaces that are used for the various biofidelity tests for various sizes of dummies are not documented. This paper describes the rationale for how these impact surfaces should be scaled, gives the scaling equations, and gives the dimensions of the impact surfaces that should be used for the various biofidelity tests of the different sizes of adult and child dummies. For future PMHS and human volunteer tests that are conducted to define impact biofidelity guidelines, it is recommended that the impact surfaces be scaled for the test subject size so that the data can be appropriately normalized to any size subject.