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Rollover crashes are often difficult to reconstruct in detail because of their chaotic nature. Historically, vehicle speeds in rollover crashes have been calculated using a simple slide-to-stop formula with empirically derived drag factors. Roll rates are typically calculated in an average sense over the entire rollover or a segment of it in which vehicle roll angles are known at various positions. A unified model to describe the translational and rotational vehicle dynamics throughout the rollover sequence is lacking. We propose a pseudo-cylindrical model of a rolling vehicle in which the rotational and translational dynamics are coupled to each other based on the average frictional forces developed during ground contacts. We describe the model as pseudo-cylindrical because vertical motion is ignored but the ground reaction force is not constrained to act directly underneath the center of gravity of the vehicle.

Calculating head accelerations and neck loading is essential for understanding and predicting head and neck injury. Most of the desired information cannot be directly measured in experiments with human volunteers. Achieving accurate results after applying the necessary transformations from remote measurements is difficult, particularly in the case of a head impact. The objective of this study was to develop a methodology for accurately calculating the accelerations at the center of gravity of the head and the loads and moments at the occipital condyles. To validate this methodology in a challenging test condition, twenty (20) human volunteers and a Hybrid III dummy were subjected to forehead impacts from a soccer ball traveling horizontally at speeds up to 11.5 m/s. The human subjects and the Hybrid III were instrumented with linear accelerometers and an angular rate sensor inside the mouth.

A simple two-dimensional particle model was developed to predict the airborne trajectory, landing point, tumbling distance, and rest position of an occupant ejected in a rollover crash. The ejected occupant was modeled as a projectile that was launched tangentially at a given radius from the center of gravity of the vehicle. The landing and tumbling phases of the ejection were modeled assuming a constant coefficient of friction between the occupant and the ground. Model parameters were optimized based on a dolly rollover test of a 1998 Ford Expedition in which five unbelted anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) were completely ejected. A generalized vehicle dynamics model was also created assuming a constant translational deceleration and a prescribed roll rate function. Predictions using the generalized model were validated against the results of the full-scale rollover test to estimate the expected error when using the model in a real world situation.