Abdominal Trauma-Review, Response, and Criteria

As an aid to designing an abdominal insert for anthropomorphic dummies, a study of abdominal trauma factors has been made. Questions regarding human impact response and tolerance were answered within the framework of primate scaling. Results of subhuman primate impacts and primate anthropometry were combined to produce injury criteria for frontal and lateral abdominal impacts. Impact response for the frontal and lateral directions was also defined for humans. The primate impact data used in the study was obtained in the early 1970's in laboratory tests utilizing a specially designed “air gun”. This test set up emphasizes reproducibility and control. Human lateral abdominal impact data first published by Walfisch et al., in 1980 were reanalyzed and used to check the primate scaling. Significant differences in impact injury tolerances for various abdominal locations were noted and detailed. As a result of these analyses little difference was noted in the force-penetration response as a function of impact location. A design envelope is proposed which can be used in the development of a dummy abdomen, and an injury criterion first suggested by Viano and Lau in 1983 is validated against the set of data analyzed here.