Citation

Bourdet N, Willinger R. Int. J. Crashworthiness 2006; 11(6): 553-560.

Affiliation

Strasbourg University, ULP-CNRS 7507, 67000 Strasbourg, France

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The development of new protective systems must be performed on reliable tools and representative of an alive human. It is clear and often addressed in the literature that under such an impact configuration, the deformation of the torso and the car seat is of extreme importance and defines the initial conditions of the head-neck system. To address this issue, an original lumped model of the human torso was developed and coupled to a car seat-head rest complex. The modal analysis of the human torso in a seating position conduced by Kitazaki and Griffin in 1998 was used in this study for both masses and mechanical properties identification. This model of minimum complexity, able to reproduce the five first experimental vibration modes, was validated in the frequency domain in terms of natural frequencies and damping as well as mode shapes. In addition to the lumped approach, an external geometry of the human torso was implemented to couple the human body model to a finite element model of the car seat also developed in this study. Rear impact simulation permits it to observe realistic body behavior and accurate T1 acceleration, an essential aspect in real-world accident reconstruction, and seat-head rest evaluation and optimization against neck loading.