Pedestrian protection full-body simulations, dummy validation

Road accident statistics indicate significant numbers of casualties to pedestrians impacted by passenger cars. In Europe a test procedure has been proposed to assess the pedestrian protection offered by the front of a car. The test procedure developed by EEVC consists of a number of component tests on the vehicle structure with various types of impactors, representing parts of the human body. The test method represents accidents with children and adults impacted at 40 km/hr. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the proposed EEVC test method with a computer simulation methodology. For this purpose first a production vehicle was tested with the component tests and tests were modelled in MADYMO. Modifications were introduced such that all injury values decreased below 80% of the applicable tolerance values. Four modified vehicle models with markedly differing shapes were developed. Full body pedestrian models were developed for a 50th percentile male, a 5th percentile female and 3 and 6 year old children. These full body pedestrian models were applied to simulate lateral impact with the production vehicle models and with the 4 modified vehicle models. Results of the simulations will be summarised. Although the vehicle modifications based on the EEVC test methodology resulted in most cases in a lower injury risk in the full body pedestrian simulations, a number of critical items for which further analyses is needed, were identified. In particular this holds for the higher risks of torso injuires in children in case of some of the modified vehicles.