Finite Element Study of Post-crash Kinematics and Injury Mechanisms of Bus-Pedestrian Collisions

Road traffic accidents are major cause of fatalities and losing property. In many big cities, many common fatal accidents are involved buses and pedestrians. In order to increase safety for pedestrians, it is necessary to understand pedestrian-vehicle collisions and injury mechanisms. Injury characteristics and mechanisms depend on post-crash kinematics. It is obvious that post-crash kinematics resulting from passenger car-pedestrian crash is much different from bus-pedestrian crash. Bus-pedestrian collision study can be done through costly full scale crash tests. An alternative approach to these actual tests is finite element simulations which have been widely employed for vehicle components design and optimisation. This paper has addressed the development of bus-to-pedestrian collision finite element model. The model has been used to study influences of impact speed and impact angle on post-crash kinematics and injury mechanisms of a pedestrian. Relations between the injury risk, the impact speeds and the impact angles have been discussed. The analysis information will assist better design of the bus front structure.