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This paper describes a modeling method whereby the occupant impacts during rollover collisions may be predicted with sufficient accuracy to predict their injury level. By using MADYMO to reconstruct the vehicle motions during a rollover collision and the subsequent vehicle accelerations, the model may also be used to calculate occupant impact accelerations if reasonable estimates of interior surface stiffnesses are used.

Typically the roll propensity of a vehicle is calculated from the assumption that the vehicle is a rigid body and that its roll propensity can be determined by taking the ratio of the track width and the center of gravity height. However, a passenger vehicle is not a rigid body; it is at least two rigid bodies connected through links and springs and shock absorbers. The objective of this paper is to derive a new second order rollover metric, which will predict whether a vehicle may be susceptible to rollover from simple physical measurements of the vehicle. The validation of the derived metric using a stock and modified vehicle configuration will be presented. Further validation with several vehicles is planned and will be reported in later papers.