Effect of Operational Testing and Trim Manufacturing Process Variation on Head Injury Criterion in FMVSS 201 Tests 2008-01-1218

This paper analyzes the difference in impact response of the forehead of the Hybrid III and THOR-NT dummies in free motion headform tests when a dummy strikes the interior trim of a vehicle. Hybrid III dummy head is currently used in FMVSS201 tests. THOR-NT dummy head has been in development to replace Hybrid III head. The impact response of the forehead of both the Hybrid III dummy and THOR dummy was designed to the same human surrogate data. Therefore, when the forehead of either dummy is impacted with the same initial conditions, the acceleration response and consequently the head Injury criterion (HIC) should be similar. A number of manufacturing variables can affect the impacted interior trim panels. This work evaluates the effect of process variation on the response in the form of Head Injury Criterion (HIC). To compare and contrast the response of the two dummy heads under FMVSS 201 testing, a design of experiments (DOE), that is a function of seven variables, is utilized to develop a mathematical model of the Head Impact Response. These independent parameters include five trim manufacturing process variables that relate to the interior that the dummy head hits in FMVSS 201 testing. The process variables are: mold temperature, melt temperature, packing pressure, hold pressure, and injection speed. The two operational variables considered are: free motion headform approach angle and the dummy head drop calibration. An incomplete block design approach is utilized in order to significantly reduce the number of experiments. The DOE approach determines the response in the form of the Head Impact Criterion (HIC) with respect to the seven variables at 99% confidence level. A mathematical model is developed to optimize the response as a function of the significant variables. The results indicate that the effects of manufacturing variables are insignificant on the response of both Hybrid III and THOR-NT dummies when interior trim panels are manufactured within the normal process. Also, the results describe the response data of both dummy heads and indicate that the Hybrid III dummy head and the THOR dummy head have significantly different response characteristics in terms of magnitude of response, variation to different input conditions, repeatability, HIC values, and acceleration time history.