Several faculty from the Biosciences Group participated in the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV) conference in Detroit this month.
Hu, J., Klinich, K., Manary, M.A., Flannagan, C.A.C., Narayanaswamy, P., Reed, M.P., Andreen, M., Neal, M., and Lin, C-H. (2017). Does Unbelted Safety Requirement Affect Protection for Belted Occupants? This article has been accepted for publication in Traffic Injury Prevention.
My colleague Dr. Jingwen Hu gave an overview of a large-scale study funded by NHTSA and conducted collaboratively with General Motors. Under FMVSS 208, automakers are required to certify their vehicles based in part on a frontal crash test with unbelted dummies. Several automakers have petitioned NHTSA to permit them to skip the unbelted test if they have belt assurance systems that can be expected to produce near 100% belt use. In this study, we conducted a large number of simulations to optimize the restraint system with and without the belted test. The major change in the restraint system in the absence of the unbelted test is to remove the knee bolster, which changes load sharing between the remaining components of the frontal protection system (seat, seat belt, steering column, and steering wheel airbag).
Jones, M.L.H., Ebert, S.M., Hu, J., Park, B-K D., and Reed, M.P. (2017). Proximity to the steering wheel for obese drivers. Proc. 25th ESV. Detroit, MI.
Dr. Monica Jones presented the first study to examine the spatial relationship between the steering wheel and torso for individuals with high body mass index (BMI). Her study demonstrated that none of a cohort of 52 obese drivers sat with the recommended 250 mm of clearance to the steering wheel, and some, particularly those with short stature, sat with essentially a contact condition at the lower wheel rim. These findings may have important implications for crash safety, because the restraint systems are tuned for frontal impact conditions in which the airbag is able to deploy fully prior to contacting the occupant. We are conducting simulations studies using morphed parametric human body models of obese occupants to understand how to optimize restraints for these individuals.
Hu, J., Zhang, K., Fanta, A., Hwang, E., and Reed M.P. (2017). Effects of male stature and body shape on thoracic impact response using parametric finite element human modeling. Proc. 25th ESV. Detroit, MI.
Over the past several years, our group has developed automated methods for rapidly modifying the size and shape of FE models used for occupant simulations in crashes. This study was the first to morph both widely used detailed models of midsize male occupants, from the THUMS and GHBMC families. The results demonstrate the utility of being able to separate true anatomical effects from the differences between models.