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At present, numerous restraint systems for children applied in vehicles are in general considered for the use on the back seats. Up to now, only impact tests with dummies and animals have been carried through by these systems. Out of the great number of children seats and belts we used a system (deformable safety impact table combined with a lap-belt) which has been investigated by us during frontal impacts utilizing two dummies and four cadavers of children in the age of 2,5 up to 11 years having body weights of 16 up to 31 kg. The tests have been conducted on the deceleration-sled track at the Institute of Legal Medicine of the University Heidelberg. Impact velocities of 30 km/h and 40 km/h at a medium deceleration of 20g have been chosen. None of the test subjects showed injuries to the inner organs; however, numerous muscular hemorrhages as well as hemorrhages of discs and ligaments were noticed.

At the 30th Stapp Conference an analysis was presented of human volunteer head-neck response in omni-directional impact tests. It was shown that the relative head motion can be described by a simple two-pivot analog system. The present study extends this analysis to post-mortem human subject (PMHS) tests conducted at the University of Heidelberg. Two test series similar to the human volunteer frontal impacts tests were carried out. One having an impact severity identical to the most severe human volunteer tests. A second series with higher exposure levels are used to verify the proposed analog system for higher impact levels. Test results including neck injury data for five PMHS tests will be given with special attention to trajectories of the head center of gravity, head rotations and head accelerations. It is concluded that the center of gravity trajectories for the PMHS and volunteer tests are similar for both impact levels.

The paper presents and discusses results of the FAT research project “Loading Limits and Injury Mechanism of Belted Occupants in Lateral Collisions.” Knowledge of load limits and injury mechanism is a mandatory for the definition and assessment of measures to further increase existing levels of vehicle occupant protection. The effectiveness of vehicle engineering measures is examined by one of the means of experimental simulation utilizing dummies. One of the purposes of this research project was to determine the suitability of dummies as test devices for lateral impact testing. In this connection, correlation of dummy loads and occupant injuries was to be examined in order to establish occupant protection criteria for the marching of test results with dummies with the real world accident scene. The behavior of cadavers and HSRI-, APROD- and Hybrid II dummies is compared in 90° lateral impacts with 50 km/h impact velocity.