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The Frangible Abdomen is a crushable Styrofoam insert for the abdominal region of the Hybrid III family of dummies, which has biofidelity, and assesses the occurrence of submarining and its risk of injury. It was first developed for the mid-sized male Hybrid III dummy. This paper describes the design of the Frangible Abdomen for the small female Hybrid III dummy, and how to use it to assess the occurrence and the risk of injury from submarining. The force-deflection properties of the mid-sized male insert were scaled to the small female dimension using equal stress/equal velocity scaling. Sled tests were run to compare the kinematic and dynamic performance of the baseline small female Hybrid III dummy with the same dummy modified to incorporate the Frangible Abdomen. The kinematic and submarining performance of the small female Hybrid III dummy was unchanged by the addition of the Frangible Abdomen. The Frangible Abdomen was easy to install and use, and had excellent repeatability.

Studies conducted in the 1970's suggested that inflatable belt restraints might provide a high level of occupant protection based on experiments with dummies, cadavers and volunteers. Although inflating the belt was one factor which contributed to achieving these experimental results, much of the reported performance was associated with other features in the restraint system. Exploratory experiments with the Hybrid III dummy indicated similar trends to previous studies, belt inflation reducing dummy response amplitudes by pretensioning and energy absorption while reducing displacement. The potential advantage of an increased loaded area by an inflatable belt could not be objectively demonstrated from previous studies or from dummy responses. Clearly, belt inflation can be one component of a belt restraint system which tends to reduce test response amplitudes. However, other belt system configurations have demonstrated similar test response amplitudes.

This study is an extension of previous work on driver air bag deployment loads which used the mid-size male Hybrid Ill dummy. Both small female and mid-size male Hybrid Ill dummies were tested with a range of near-positions relative to the air bag module. These alignments ranged from the head centered on the module to the chest centered on the module and with various separations and lateral shifts from the module. For both sized dummies the severity of the loading from the air bag depended on alignment and separation of the dummy with respect to the air bag module. No single alignment provided high responses for all body regions, indicating that one test at a typical alignment cannot simultaneously determine the potential for injury risk for the head, neck, and torso. Based on comparisons with their respective injury assessment reference values, the risk of chest injury appeared similar for both sized dummies.

This paper details the development of an abdominal injury assessment device for loading due to belt restraint submarining in the Hybrid III family of dummies. The design concept and criteria, response criteria, choice of injury criterion, and validation are explained. Conclusions of this work are: 1) Abdominal injury assessment for belt loading due to submarining is now possible in the Hybrid III family of dummies. 2) The abdomen developed has biofidelity in its force deflection characteristics for belt loading, is capable of detecting the occurrence of submarining, and can be used to determine the probability of abdominal injury when submarining occurs. 3) Installation of the abdomen in the Hybrid III dummy does not change the dummy kinematics when submarining does not occur. 4) When submarining does occur, the dummy kinematics are very similar to baseline Hybrid III kinematics, except for torso angle.