No abstract

Go-kart-related injuries and fatalities have been investigated in several international studies over the past two decades, yet few have focussed on their crashworthiness. Go-karts are a unique racing and recreational vehicle that require careful consideration in terms of crashworthiness issues. Furthermore, no studies have been reported investigating Australian go-kart-related injuries and fatalities. To address this gap, the pattern of hospitalised morbidity and death associated with go-kart-related injuries in Australia were analysed. Also an in-depth case study of a go-kart fatal incident was simulated using a multi-body program commonly used to design crashworthy vehicle and barrier systems in order to highlight implications for the crashworthy design required for go-kart safety equipment and barrier protection. Recommendations concerning accessible safety devices such as seat belts, roll bars and appropriately designed energy dissipating crashworthy barrier systems are discussed.

No abstract

The survivability of soldiers in the rear of military vehicles when involved in a crash has been identified as an area of major concern. The Australian Army via Project TRANSAFE has developed and evaluated a range of side facing Seat and Seat Belt Systems (SSBS) for the Perentie 4x4 to improve crash survivability. Options which have been evaluated include; bench seat with lap seat belt, bench seat with lap sash seat belt, individual seat with harness. wooden seat with lap sash seat belt and a plastic seat with lap sash seat belt. Tests were conducted on isolated single seating systems and on multiple seating systems simulating the internal structure of the Perentie 4x4. Wooden and plastic prototype SSBS demonstrated a low probability for life threatening head, neck and chest injuries while the bench seat options and individual seat and harness SSBS have a high probability of serious, if not life threatening, head, neck and chest injuries.A set of three-dimensional MADYMO models were also developed and validated. simulating the SSBS with seated 50th percentile Hybrid Ill dummies subjected to a mid-severity crash pulse. The dummy kinematics and injury parameters from the simulation were compared to tests and fairly good agreement was found.

Port infrastructure is vulnerable to the corrosive marine environment leading to deterioration, loss of functionality, delays in shipping, major maintenance, remediation and, in the worst cases, loss of structural integrity and consequent replacement of the asset. Despite this, asset managers are unable to adequately plan for the prevention and minimisation of maintenance due to a lack of reliable predictive tools, that simulate the deterioration and a lack of a lifecycle model incorporating protection/maintenance options. This paper reports on a project to develop such a tool to facilitate the probabilistic modelling of the deterioration of reinforced concrete elements from construction through onset of corrosion to subsequent cracking and spalling. The Australian government funded project is in collaboration with several port authorities. The study has narrowed the key factors that have the most impact on the estimation of corrosion initiation and damage propagation allowing better definition of what data should be collected, how much and levels of accuracy required to ensure that predictive outputs obtained are as ‘robust’ as possible.