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A finite element (FE) model of the lower limb was developed to improve the understanding of injury mechanisms of thigh, knee, and leg during car-to-pedestrian impacts and to aid in the design of injury countermeasures for vehicle front-ends. The geometry of the model was reconstructed from CT scans of the Visible Human Project Database and commercial anatomical databases. The geometry and mass were scaled to those of a 50th percentile male and the entire lower limb was positioned in a standing position according to the published anthropometric references. A "structural approach" was utilized to generate the FE mesh using mostly hexahedral and quadrilateral elements to enhance the computational efficiency of the model. The material properties were selected based on a synthesis on current knowledge of the constitutive models for each tissue.

The purpose of this study is to determine the loads in the long bones of the lower extremities during vehicle pedestrian impact tests, and to correlate load data with observed kinematics in an effort to understand how stature and vehicle shape influence pedestrian response. In tests with a large sedan and a small multi-purpose vehicle (MPV), four postmortem human surrogates (PMHS) in mid-stance gait were struck laterally at 40 km/h. Prior to the tests, each PMHS was instrumented with four uniaxial strain gages around the mid-shaft cross section of the struck-side (right) tibia and the femora bilaterally. After the tests, the non-fractured bones were harvested and subjected to three-point bending experiments. The effective elastic moduli were determined by relating the applied bending loads with the measured strains using strain gage locations, detailed bone geometry, and elastic beam theory.