Occupant injury risk assessment and protective measures in frontal collision of a bus

Abstract

Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK; +44 1912086197; newrail@newcastle.ac.uk. Dr. Qian PENG is an associate professor of School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Xiamen University of Technology. Main research interests include crashworthiness, biomechanics and lightweight. He carries out research on China Project to improve vehicle safety. Tingting SUN is a postgraduate student of Vehicle Engineering, School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Xiamen University of Technology, majoring in crashworthiness. Pengpeng ZHU is a postgraduate student of Vehicle Engineering, School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Xiamen University of Technology, majoring in crashworthiness. Fenggang HAN is a senior engineer of Xiamen University of Technology. His research fields are bus development project management and vehicle quality evaluation; CAE analysis and lightweight research on bus and components. Dr. Emmanuel Matsika is a research associate at NewRail. He carries out research on EU Projects aimed at improving safety of passenger railway vehicles, and enhancing the performance of railway freight vehicles.Abstract: A significant issue worldwide is a bus frontal collision which can result in more than 10 fatalities per incident. The purpose of this study is to develop recommendations aimed at reducing occupant injury risk in such frontal collisions.To assess potential injuries, sled tests were carried out based on ECE R80. The influence of a lap belt on the kinematics and injury characteristics of the occupant was investigated. A LS-DYNA and MADYMO coupling method was used to study the influence of seat layout variables including seat pitch, height difference and back inclination angle on injury to different occupant body parts. By applying a combination of ECE R80 with FMVSS 208, the effectiveness and relevance of current test methods on occupant injury were evaluated. Subsequently, the protection measures were developed to reduce occupant injury risk. The resultsshow that secondary collision with the front seat back can cause severe head and neck injuries. Although the lap belt can restrict the movement of the pelvis and lower limbs, the collision and relative slippage between the head and the front seat back can still cause a high neck bending moment. The study further reveals that seat layout variables should be design-specified to optimal values that minimize such injuries. Recommendations have been made on the development of government policy and industry standards aimed at improving the occupant injury risk in a frontal crash. It is strongly recommended to include injury severity based on head acceleration (not only HIC) and neck injury criteria.

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“…Over the past decades, many essential research achievements have been made [10][11][12]. For instance, children's anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs), with their respective finite element models, were proposed as injury assessment tools to evaluate their injuries in traffic accidents to evaluate the effectiveness of child restraint systems, such as child safety seats and booster seats [13].…”

Optimal design of continuously inflated airbag for 12-year-old child occupants with various sitting postures

“…Each sample has n parameters to be evaluated (j = 1, 2, Á Á Á, n). Step 2: The construction function of normalization was defined as shown in equation (14).…”

“…The protective effects of three-point safety belts for child occupants are significantly better than those of two-point safety belts. 13 Peng et al 14 indicated that a three-point safety belt can effectively limit the movement of occupant and protect the head from impacts experienced when an occupant uses a two-point safety belt only. However, three-point safety belts are unable to effectively protect the child occupants with the non-standard sitting postures, and even cause serious or fatal injury.…”