Thorough knowledge of the characteristics of the human body and its behaviour under extreme loading conditions is essential in order to prevent the serious consequences of road and other accidents. This field of research is called injury or impact biomechanics. In order to study the human body response, five types of models for the human body can be distinguished: human volunteers, human cadavers, living and dead animals, mechanical models (crash dummies) and mathematical models. These models briefly will be introduced. This presentation will concentrate on mechanical models (also called crash dummies) and mathematical models of the human body. An overview of the current status in this field will be presented. Items to be discussed include child and adult dummies, dummies for different application fields, computer models of crash dummies and computer models for the real human body. Areas of future development will be identified. For crash dummies the future challenge is in particular in the field of international harmonisation. For human body computer models the future challenge will be to develop models that offer a more realistic description of the human body than current crash dummies do.
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