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Biofidelity of dummy legs for use in legislative car crash testing
Technical Paper
2000-04-0327
Sector:
Language:
English
Abstract
Lower leg injuries are a common and potentially disabling injury
experienced by car front seat occupants in frontal impacts. It is
clearly important to be able to detect and quantify the risk of
these injuries using anthropometric dummies in vehicle impact
testing. The need for a more biofidelic lower leg and the
development of well founded injury criteria has been identified.
However, at present, there are insufficient dynamic biomechanical
data available to aid the design and construction of advanced dummy
legs, or to define injury risk criteria.
This paper reports a biofidelity study, comprising a series of
dynamic low energy impact tests with post mortem human surrogate
(PMHS) legs and volunteers both braced and unbraced. Comparative
tests were performed on three existing dummy legs: the Hybrid III;
the General Motors Corporation (GM/FTSS) foot and ankle attached to
the Hybrid III lower leg; and the prototype Thor-Lx, a new lower
leg recently developed by the National Highway and Traffic Safety
Agency (NHTSA) in the USA.
Tests using a method of generating an Achilles force in PMHS
specimens have enabled further biofidelic comparisons of the
dummies with the human lower limb. The difficulties inherent in the
interpretation of PMHS dynamic testing are discussed. The three
dummy types have been evaluated against tests on PMHS subjects and
human volunteers. The data presented shows the more accurate
results, for both axial loading during impact, and kinematic
response is seen with the advanced dummy legs (Thor-Lx and the
GM/FTSS foot and ankle). The newly designed Thor-Lx has been shown
to be much more biofidelic. This, in addition to the increased
instrumentation in this prototype, makes it a useful research tool
in the quest to help reduce the incidence of severely disabling
injuries in frontal impacts.