Evaluation of Occupant Dynamic Responses and Development of Injury Criteria for a3 Year Old Child

摘要

National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Federal AviationAdministration (FAA) have specified certain injury criteria, based on which the occupant safety devices such as seats and restraint systems are designed to reduce occupant injuries. But all the injury criteria have been developed for adult occupants, represented by a 50th percentile Hybrid 2 dummy, and little attention has been paid for other sized occupants, specially child occupants. But the recent concentration on child safety system has resulted in the development of child dummies, child seats and child restraint systems. But these child seats and restraint systems can be considered safe only if they comply to certain injury criteria that are valid for children. In this study, sled experiments were conducted, for a 50th percentile Hybrid 2 ATD, with the impact test facilities available at the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) at The Wichita State University (WSU). These experiments were then simulated on the crash analysis software (SOM-LA/TA, MADYMO, ATBM) available at NIAR in order to validate these codes. The experiments were also simulated for a three year old child dummy, to analyze how an occupant of different size is going to respond under the above test conditions. Comparison of the resultant head acceleration, HIC results, and lumbar load results were performed between the adult and child occupants. In order to determine whether the child would pass the tests, injury criteria were then developed based on dimensional analysis and scaling techniques for a three year old child dummy.