A Computationally Efficient Finite Element Pedestrian Model for Head Safety: Development and Validation

Abstract

Head injuries are often fatal or of sufficient severity to pedestrians in vehicle crashes. Finite element (FE) simulation provides an effective approach to understand pedestrian head injury mechanisms in vehicle crashes. However, studies of pedestrian head safety considering full human body response and a broad range of impact scenarios are still scarce due to the long computing time of the current FE human body models in expensive simulations. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop and validate a computationally efficient FE pedestrian model for future studies of pedestrian head safety. Firstly, a FE pedestrian model with a relatively small number of elements (432,694 elements) was developed in the current study. This pedestrian model was then validated at both segment and full body levels against cadaver test data. The simulation results suggest that the responses of the knee, pelvis, thorax, and shoulder in the pedestrian model are generally within the boundaries of cadaver test corridors under lateral impact loading. The upper body (head, T1, and T8) trajectories show good agreements with the cadaver data in vehicle-to-pedestrian impact configuration. Overall, the FE pedestrian model developed in the current study could be useful as a valuable tool for a pedestrian head safety study.

Quantifying the effects of five rehabilitation training methods on the ability of elderly men to control bowel movements: a finite element analysis study

“…The finite element type is mainly tetrahedron, supplemented by hexahedron. When setting the material properties in the model, we retrieved existing material data in previous studies ( Lee et al, 2005 ; Boubaker et al, 2009 ; Zhang et al, 2009 ; Rao et al, 2010 ; Venugopala Rao et al, 2010 ; Wein, 2011 ; Larson et al, 2012 ; Chen, 2014 ; Sichting et al, 2014 ; Brandão et al, 2015 ; Chen et al, 2015 ; Krcmar et al, 2015 ; Samavati et al, 2015 ; Sun, 2015 ; He, 2016 ; Ma et al, 2016 ; Peng et al, 2016 ; Silva et al, 2016 ; Dias et al, 2017 ; Li et al, 2017 ; Liu, 2017 ; Ricci et al, 2018 ; Guo et al, 2019 ; Li et al, 2019 ; Ma, 2019 ; Wu, 2019 ; Zhou et al, 2020 ; Xu et al, 2021 ; Xuan et al, 2021 ; Li, 2022 ; Yao et al, 2022 ; Zong, 2022 ), summarized the mechanical parameters recognized in the literature, and obtained the material properties of the research object in this study. Because the literature shows that there are differences in the mechanical performance characteristics of old and young pelvic soft tissues, and the material properties may change ( Chantereau et al, 2014 ), we made appropriate adjustments on the of material properties, and we verified whether the data conditioning is appropriate by completing the verification steps of the finite element model, the specific parameters are shown in Table 1 .…”

A Computational Biomechanics Human Body Model Coupling Finite Element and Multibody Segments for Assessment of Head/Brain Injuries in Car-To-Pedestrian Collisions

“…In order to overcome these limitations. Shu [41] applied mesh morphing technology [42,43] to the study of impact injury in obese children, which helped to simplify the FE human model adjustment process; Lalwala et al [44] reconstructed real-world car-to-pedestrian impact accidents using a full-scale THUMS FE model, with the purpose of investigating the kinematics behavior and evaluating the biofidelity of this model; Li et al [45] improved the computational efficiency of the THUMS model by increasing the skeleton elements size and simplifying the lower limbs of the model, and this simplified FE pedestrian model performed well in the prediction of the pedestrian kinematics when simulating existing cadaver tests. Chai et al [46] constructed a pedestrian model (knockdown human model) by combining a simplified FE head model (including just cortical bone, cancellous bone, encephalon and scalp) with the TNO model, connected by a dynamic hinge.…”