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This paper reports a study undertaken by the Crash Safety Working Group (CSWG) of the United States Council for Automotive Research (USCAR) to determine generic acceleration pulses for testing and evaluating advanced batteries subjected to inertial loading for application in electric passenger vehicles. These pulses were based on characterizing vehicle acceleration time histories from standard laboratory vehicle crash tests. Crash tested passenger vehicles in the United States vehicle fleet of the model years 2005-2009 were used in this study. Crash test data, in terms of acceleration time histories, were collected from various crash modes conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) during their New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) evaluations, and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

Nij, a function of upper neck forces and moment, plays a dominant role in the vehicle's star rating under the new NHTSA NCAP front impact program. This is mainly due to an artifact in the mapping of the Nij into the “risk” value used in the star rating, and the fact that the neck region is not weighted appropriately to reflect its real world significance relative to the other body regions in the NCAP rating. New test data also show that compared with the 50th male driver Nij, the 5th female passenger Nij is significantly more challenging to contain and therefore it is more dominant in the star rating. This paper describes the Hybrid III dummy head and neck impact response and provides a method to determine the external force acting on the head. The force and its acting point on the head are determined from head acceleration, angular acceleration, and the upper neck forces.