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In recent years, a large number of studies and researches have been developed focusing on occupant protection during vehicular collisions. In this context, it is growing the interest on the monitoring of children's kinematics and injuries mechanisms due to automotive crashes. Further, Euro NCAP intends to introduce dynamic tests for older children introducing Q6 in the new protocols by 2015. Focusing on children safety and in those new requirements it was developed a computational dummy using finite elements method. The 6-years-old dummy developed provides numerical simulation results which support the assessments of the child's dynamic in a vehicular accident. Since the numerical model of the 6-year-old child is under development at the moment, a preliminary study of a numerical child dummy was performed, based on the hybrid III midsize adult male dummy which was scaled and balanced to reach the 6-year-old dummy dimensions, masses and inertias.

Among all types of vehicle crashes, rollover is the most complex and yet least understood. During the last decades, a constant increase in the studies involving rollover crashes and injuries associated with it can be observed. Although the rollover is not the most frequent type of accident, it is of the greatest significance with respect to injury and trauma caused to the vehicle occupants. The existing standards and procedures to test rollover crashworthiness are still not suitable to computer simulation because of the huge computational effort required, and the need of faithful/overly complex representation of the aspects involved in real crashes. The objective of the present work is the development of computational models particularly adapted to simulate different standards and procedures used to evaluate the vehicles' roof strength. The models are compared with other approaches, and their advantages/disadvantages are discussed.