Side Impact PMHS Thoracic Response With Large-Volume Air Bag

Abstract

Two of the 3 PMHS sustained rib fractures despite low levels of thorax deflection. We attribute this finding to individual variability in subject injury tolerance. Other response parameters exhibited lower levels of variability and characterize PMHS response to a potentially beneficial side impact countermeasure. Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Traffic Injury Prevention to view the supplemental file.

Understanding how pre-impact posture can affect injury outcome in side impact sled tests using a new tool for visualization of cadaver kinematics

“…Examination of intrinsic variation among subjects (e.g. anthropometry and rib fracture tolerance) did not reveal any definite correlation between these factors and the injury outcome, and extrinsic factors, such as pre-impact posture, were not investigated , Shaw et al, 2014.…”

“…Two recent studies have reported the whole-body response of PMHS to side impact with a rigid wall and with an airbag (Shaw et al, 2014), including the six-degree-offreedom kinematics of skeletal structures in the PMHS. Injury outcomes varied substantially in these tests, ranging from no injury in two rigid-wall tests and one airbag test (no rib fractures) to moderate injury in one airbag test (2 rib fractures) to serious injury in one rigid-wall test and one airbag test (16 and 9 rib fractures respectively) ( Table 1).…”

“…By neglecting intrinsic variations among PMHS (e.g. anthropometry and material properties) and examining solely kinematics, we hypothesized that we can identify quantitative parameters in pre-impact posture directly connected to the injury Lessley et al (2010) and Shaw et al (2014) described the experiments in detail. Six 50th-percentile male PMHS were tested; three in each impact condition (Table 1).…”

“…A rigid wall installed on a 1700-kg rail-mounted sled struck the subject on the right side at 4.3 m/s. Shaw et al (2014) included a large side airbag which deployed fully before impact (Fig. 1).…”

“…In this study, we created three-dimensional kinematic animations (3DKA) of the tests by Lessley et al (2010) and Shaw et al (2014) by combining subjectspecific bone geometry with six-degree-of-freedom bone kinematics recorded during the tests. By neglecting intrinsic variations among PMHS (e.g.…”