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The purpose of this study was to characterize front stiffness response of contemporary sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and trucks. Vehicle front impact test data were obtained from data published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA]. For all tests, force data were obtained from barrier load cells and stroke data were derived from accelerometers. Data from 53 truck and SUV tests were aggregated by vehicle product segment according to body style to obtain mean ± standard deviation (SD) stiffness corridors: (1) compact unibody SUV/crossover, (2) small unibody SUV/crossover, (3) mid-size unibody SUV/crossover, (4) frame SUV, and (5) frame truck. To compare between vehicle product segments, this study also considered the average stiffness (slope) within the stroke region required to achieve 300 kN total barrier force. Across unibody SUV segments, average stiffness varied from 1.4–1.8 kN/mm.

Ankle injuries continue to occur in motor vehicle collisions, particularly in female occupants. The causes of these injuries are sometimes unclear. Further understanding of ankle fracture tolerance and refinement of ankle injury prediction tools would help future injury prediction efforts. The goal of this study was to identify ankle injury types of interest and develop a test methodology to induce these injuries. Cases were examined from NHTSA’s Crash Injury Research Engineering Network (CIREN) database. 68 cases with distal tibia fracture were identified from CIREN years 2017+ (vehicle models years 2010+). The most common fractures were pilon fractures and malleolar fractures. Based on these results, a test methodology was developed to induce pilon and medial malleolar fractures in isolated cadaveric tibiae to quantify local fracture tolerance. Nineteen post-mortem human subject (PMHS) specimens (9 male and 10 female across a wide anthropometric range) were tested.