Development of Dummy and Injury index for NHTSA's Thoracic Side Impact Protection Research Program

Since 1976, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has pursued biomechanical research concerning lateral impacts to automotive occupants. These efforts have included (a) the generation of an experimental data base containing both detailed engineering and physiological responses of human surrogates experiencing lateral impacts, (b) the analysis of this data base to develop both an injury index linking the engineering parameters to an injury severity level and response corridors to guide in the design of a test dummy, and (c) the development and refinement of a side impact test dummy suitable for use in safety systems development and evaluation. The progress of these efforts has been periodically reported in the literature [1-17]* and these references document the evolutionary trail NHTSA has followed over the duration of this research program.

The purpose of this paper is to state NHTSA's current understanding of the side impact phenomena by summarizing the currently available biomechanical data, explaining the process by which current injury index and mechanical response corridors were developed, and detailing the current status of NHTSA's Side Impact Dummy (SID).