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Side impacts have been shown to produce a large portion of both serious and fatal injuries within the total automotive crash problem. These injuries are produced as a result of the rapid changes in velocity an automobile occupant's body experiences during a crash. Any improvement to the side impact problem will be brought about by means which will ultimately modify the occupant's rapid body motions to such a degree that they will no longer produce injuries of serious consequence. Accurate knowledge of both the body's motion and resulting injuries under a variety of impact conditions is needed to achieve this goal. Possession of this knowledge will then permit development of accurate anthropomorphic test devices and injury criteria which can be used to create effective injury countermeasures in vehicles.

Frontal, lateral and rear-end collisions with dummy occupied wheel chairs on a deceleration sled were conducted in two test series at a collision velocity of 30 km/h, and a sled deceleration of 8 and 12 g. In the first dummy test series conventional restraint systems were used; in the second test series improved restraint systems were employed. In a further series, four cadaver tests were conducted. For all tests and collision directions the HIC values, as well as the resultant acceleration at the center of gravity lay below the admissible values of Federal Motor Safety Standard 208. Despite the low thorax accelerations numerous rib fractures occurred in the cadaver tests. In two cadaver tests, injury degrees of AIS 5 were observed (multiple liver ruptures, vertebral column injuries).

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.

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.