Space needed by a decelerating head to keep an imposed HIC at a given impact velocity

摘要

Among the technical limitations imposed by standards to head protection system manufacturers, a given Head Injury Criterion (HIC) value must be met by the recorded acceleration of a dummy head thrown with a specified impact velocity. The goal of the present theoretical study is to determine the minimum space needed by the decelerating head to stop and not to exceed the HIC value. To this end, theoretical generic sinusoidal and rectangular shaped acceleration curves have been used. Rectangular shaped accelerations were found to lead to best results, that is, less space needed. As an example, a minimum needed space of 5.9 cm was deduced for the 2003/102/EC pedestrian standard and 3.3 cm for the ECE R02 motorcyclist standard.