In order to minimize occupant injury in a vehicle crash, an approach was attempted to address this issue by making the wave form of vehicle body deceleration optimal to lower the maximum deceleration value applied to the occupant.
A study with a one-dimensional two-mass model was conducted to the kinetic mechanism between the body deceleration wave form and the responding occupant's motion while finding a mathematical solution for the optimal body deceleration wave form. A common feature of the three derived mathematical solutions is that they consist of three aspects: high deceleration, low or negative deceleration, and constant deceleration. This was demonstrated by simulation with a three-dimensional dummy. The results show that the response of the dummy closely agrees with that of the one-dimensional two-mass model, thus proving the adequacy of the mathematical solution, and that occupant injury was reduced.
A type of new body construction is proposed to yield the optimal body deceleration wave form obtained from this research.