Development and Application of an Enhanced ES-2 Dummy for Analyzing Side Impact Kinematics

When a vehicle is subjected to a side impact, only a small distance exists between the occupant and the vehicle's door. Therefore, various parts of the occupant's body including the head, chest, abdomen, and pelvis may be subjected to severe, high deceleration impacts. The ES-2 test dummy is commonly used to measure the occupant responses to the resulting loading. However, with existing ES-2 dummies, it is not possible to measure the transfer force inside a dummy (internal force) or the external force. As a result, analysis of the kinematics is often limited. To address this limitation, a dummy was developed that can help measure side impact kinematics. This dummy included 11 newly developed force transducers and 42 linear accelerometers. Software was also developed for analyzing the measured data.