In 3D simulation of vehicle accidents the vehicles are typically treated as one rigid body. This simplification can be used for vehicle to vehicle collisions as well as in impacts with solid objects. To get a realistic movement of the pedestrian in the impact simulation, the pedestrian has to be modeled as a system of rigid bodies interconnected by joints.
This paper describes in detail the extension of the discrete kinetic time forward simulation program PC-Crash to deal with multi-body-systems.
As one application of this model pedestrians have been modeled. During the generation of this pedestrian model special interest has been focused on a realistic movement of the pedestrian and a short calculation time.
The pedestrian model shows to be a good tool to analyze the movement of the pedestrian regarding its post impact kinematics and contact locations on the vehicles and the ground. In addition specific contact locations on the vehicle can be correlated with the movement of the pedestrian and damage locations on the vehicle.
For the validation of this model several crash tests have been performed and will be done. The second part of this paper describes the results of some crash tests and a comparison of the simulation results. A good agreement between crash-tests and simulation results could be found. For these crash-tests different typical shapes of the front hood of modern cars have been used to study the influence on the movement of the pedestrian during and after the impact.
The model also involves the capability to deal with different kinds of pedestrians (size and mass) under various initial conditions (standing, walking, running).