Side Impact - The Biofidelity of NHTSA's Proposed ATD and Efficacy of TTI

A number of tests conducted under the sponsorship of the FAT were reported in papers at two previous Stapp Conferences and an Experimental Safety Vehicle Conference. These tests featured human cadavers and three different Anthropomorphic Test Devices (ATD) designed for use in lateral impacts. Test subjects were placed in Opel car bodies and impacted laterally by CCMC moving deformable barriers. In the previous papers, the reported responses of the human cadavers had wide variability and none of the ATD's studied featured good biofidelity. In this effort, a reexamination of the available data was undertaken and the process and results of applying different analysis techniques to the cadaver data, which resulted in significantly reduced scatter and variability, are discussed. Comparisons of the impact responses of the cadavers and the NHTSA developed Side Impact Dummy are also made. Additionally, resulting thoracic injury outcomes in terms of AIS are combined with the cadaver response data and the efficacy of the previously proposed Thoracic Trauma Index (TTI) is examined. The conclusions reached, when more sophisticated analysis techniques were employed, are that the SID has good biofidelity and that the TTI is an accurate and usable predictor of the thoracic injury level resulting from a lateral impact.