Search Results

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).

A 2D model for vehicle-to-vehicle impact analysis that was presented in an earlier paper [1], has been used to study several two-vehicle frontal impacts with different incidence angles, frontal overlap offsets, and mass ratios. The impacts have been evaluated in terms of energy and momentum change in the bullet vehicle and the target vehicle. Based on comparisons between pre- and post-impact longitudinal, lateral, and angular components of kinetic energy, and linear and angular momenta, the impacts experienced by the target vehicle and the bullet vehicle have been classified as collinear or oblique. These results have been used to propose a definition of frontal impact based on vehicle kinematics during a crash.