Citation

Tamura A, Koide T, Yang KH. Int. J. Veh. Safety 2015; 8(1): 85.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Inderscience Publishers)

DOI

10.1504/IJVS.2015.066278

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The present study replicated a series of vehicle-to-pedestrian crashes involved in a right-corner frontal impact up to a secondary or ground impact. The results showed that post-impact pedestrian kinematics and subsequent kinetics are not easily predictable and are considerably affected by the vehicle front structure and impact speed. The Head Injury Criterion (HIC), calculated with a resultant linear acceleration of the head, reached around 1000 or higher because of secondary head strike even at 25 km/h. Similarly, the maximum rotational acceleration of the head resulted in higher values owing to ground impact rather than primary head strike. This study has also suggested the importance of accounting for both linear and angular acceleration pulses applied to the head to assess the potential risk of sustaining Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) due to eventual contact with the ground even at low impact speeds, and this should be a focus of future research.

Language: en