Citation

Zellmer H, Glaeser KP. Proc. Int. Tech. Conf. Enhanced Safety Vehicles 1995; 1995: 1139-1146.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, In public domain, Publisher National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

At the 13th International Technical Conference on Experimental Safety Vehicles (ESV) in 1991, the European Experimental Vehicles Committee Working Group (EEVC-WG) 10 subsystem test procedures for cars to assess protection for pedestrians were presented. In the meantime, more than 150 single tests were carried out using the head impactors. It showed that this test method is a reliable tool to determine the potential of harm of car front surfaces with respect to pedestrian head impact. Bonnets of ten types of cars were tested with both the adult and the child head impactor. It showed that eight out of ten bonnets of the different cars were too stiff themselves to meet the test requirements of the child impactor. With the adult impactor, over 40% of the bonnet area tested, averaged over all cars, performed well and gave a Head Injury Criterion (HIC) value below 1000. As a result, between the undersurface of the bonnet and stiff parts of substructure there should be a minimum distance of around 50 mm in the child area of impact and around 70 mm in the adult one. Four different types of crash bars of off-road vehicles were also tested. The results of the child head impactor tests showed that HIC values can exceed the test criterion, even at impact speeds reduced to a half of the proposed 40 km/h speed.