In recent years, a large number of studies and researches have been developed focusing on occupant protection during vehicular collisions. In this context, it is growing the interest on the monitoring of children's kinematics and injuries mechanisms due to automotive crashes.
Further, Euro NCAP intends to introduce dynamic tests for older children introducing Q6 in the new protocols by 2015. Focusing on children safety and in those new requirements it was developed a computational dummy using finite elements method. The 6-years-old dummy developed provides numerical simulation results which support the assessments of the child's dynamic in a vehicular accident.
Since the numerical model of the 6-year-old child is under development at the moment, a preliminary study of a numerical child dummy was performed, based on the hybrid III midsize adult male dummy which was scaled and balanced to reach the 6-year-old dummy dimensions, masses and inertias. Firstly, the child dummy model is used to evaluate the kinematics in a collision and in the future we intend to assess if this model is able to represent the biodynamics response.
The work explains the methodology applied to develop a numerical child dummy according to literature and it is based on geometric scaling factors applied to the adult male FE model (hybrid III dummy).