How much does the injury risk between average female and average male anthropometry differ? - A simulation study with open source tools for virtual crash safety assessments.

Differences in injury risk between females and males are often reported in field data analysis. The aim of this study was to investigate the differences in kinematics and injury risks between average female and male anthropometry in two exemplary use cases. A simulation study comprising the newly introduced VIVA+ human body models (HBM) was performed for two use cases. The first use case relates to whiplash associated disorders sustained in rear impacts and the second to femur fractures in pedestrians impacted by passenger cars as field data indicates that females have higher injury risk compared to males in these scenarios. Detailed seat models and a generic vehicle exterior were used to simulate crash scenarios close to those currently tested in consumer information tests. In the evaluations with one of the vehicle seats and one car shape the injury risks were equal for both models. However, the risk of the average female HBM for whiplash associated disorders was 1.5 times higher compared to the average male HBM for the rear impacts in the other seat and 10 times higher for proximal femur fractures in the pedestrian impacts for one of the two evaluated vehicle shapes.. Further work is needed to fully understand trends observed in the field and to derive appropriate countermeasures, which can be performed with the open source tools introduced in the current study.

Photoresponsive porous materials: the design and synthesis of photochromic diarylethene-based linkers and a metal-organic framework.

The synthesis and characterization of novel photochromic diarylethene-based linkers for use in metal­organic frameworks is described including crystal structure analysis of nearly all reaction intermediates. The bis-carboxylated dithien-3-ylphenanthrenes can be prepared under relatively mild conditions in high yield and were subsequently used to create a photoresponsive metal­organic framework, UBMOF-1. While the photochromism of the ligand TPDC in solution is fully reversible, the cycloreversion reaction is suppressed when this linker is incorporated into the crystalline framework of UBMOF-1.