Citation

Rafukka IA. ATBU J. Sci. Technol. Educ. 2021; 9(3): 92-103.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, School of Technology Education)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

Free motion head form is a surrogate used in injury assessment of motor vehicle crash and height fall accidents. Heads being the first priority in child injury protection need a biofidelic model that is validated in different impact locations against cadaveric response. In this work, a three-year-old (3YO) child head form finite element (FE) model was developed by scaling down anthropometry of a six-year-old Hybrid III (6YO HIII) dummy head model. The FE model was then validated against the scaled biomechanical response of published nine-year-old cadaver head experimental data. Head skin viscoelastic material properties were tuned to give a good correlation with the scaled cadaver peak head accelerations. Head drop test was conducted on five impact locations: forehead, vertex, occipital and left and right parietal. A good correlation was found between simulation and scaled cadaver results for right parietal, vertex and occipital locations of 3YO child head FE model having less than 7% difference for 153 mm, 152 mm and 148 mm drop heights respectively. Occipital and right parietal locations show fair similarities with scaled cadaver response with a difference of less than 11% for 302 mm drop height. The left parietal of the head FE model, however, is observed to be stiffer than any other impact location with a difference of more than 20% for both 148 mm and 300 mm drop heights. The validated 3YO head form is therefore useful in the evaluation of automotive safety systems and child height fall investigations.

Language: en