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Head-to-knee interaction of the right front passenger dummy can occur in some 30-35 MPH crash barrier tests. The biofidelity and significance of these interactions as related to predicting human response was addressed in this study. In a series of laboratory experiments an instrumented headform was dropped on the dummy knee to simulate the barrier interactions. These test results were then related to the human by dropping the same headform on the cadaver leg. The instrumented headform was dropped from three heights to impact the Part 572 dummy knee at three velocities. Two impact sites and two impact angles were used. These test parameters bracketed the barrier conditions. Measurements from headform accelerometers permitted calculation of HIC value for comparison to barrier values. Comparable experiments were subsequently performed with three unembalmed cadaver subjects using the same headform and test procedures.

The response of the head to impact in the posterior-to-anterior direction was investigated with live anesthetized and post-mortem primates.* The purpose of the project was to relate animal test results to previous head impact tests conducted with cadavers (reported at the 21st Stapp Car Crash Conference (1),** and to study the differences between the living and post-mortem state in terms of mechanical response. The three-dimensional motion of the head, during and after impact, was derived from experimental measurements and expressed as kinematic quantities in various reference frames. Comparison of kinematic quantities between subjects is normally done by referring the results to a standard anatomical reference frame, or to a predefined laboratory reference frame. This paper uses an additional method for describing the kinematics of head motion through the use of Frenet-Serret frame fields.