Numerical Simulation of Human Kinematics and Injuries in Side Crash Scenarios

Optimizing protection for side impact in vehicle design requires valid information about occupant behavior under lateral loading. For this reason a comparison of numerical models of dummies and human body in side impact scenarios is shown to estimate the benefits of using numerical human models in future safety design.

First a well-known sled test set up was simulated to compare the two devices in a defined surrounding. After looking at the kinematics, the loads, accelerations and injury values of the occupants were derived and compared to each other. Second the occupant models were positioned in a vehicle model to compare their behavior in a more complex loading case, such as an EuroNCAP Barrier Test. Focus of this investigation was the injury mechanism occurring in the human model.

The Behavior of the Dummy and H-Model is comparable and shows similar responses in a global view. However, the H-Model gives more Information about the mechanism of possible injuries and there are some load differences which can be established by the different construction of Dummy and Human Model.