Evaluation of DAMAGE Algorithm in Frontal Crashes.

With the current trend of including the evaluation of the risk of brain injuries in vehicle crashes due to rotational kinematics of the head, two injury criteria have been introduced since 2013 - BrIC and DAMAGE. BrIC was developed by NHTSA in 2013 and was suggested for inclusion in the US NCAP for frontal and side crashes. DAMAGE has been developed by UVa under the sponsorship of JAMA and JARI and has been accepted tentatively by the EuroNCAP. Although BrIC in US crash testing is known and reported, DAMAGE in tests of the US fleet is relatively unknown. The current paper will report on DAMAGE in NCAP-like tests and potential future frontal crash tests involving substantial rotation about the three axes of occupant heads. Distribution of DAMAGE of three-point belted occupants without airbags will also be discussed. Prediction of brain injury risks from the tests have been compared to the risks in the real world. Although DAMAGE correlates well with MPS in the human brain model across several test scenarios, the predicted risk of AIS2+ brain injuries are too high compared to real-world experience. The prediction of AIS4+ brain injury risk in lower velocity crashes is good, but too high in NCAP-like and high speed angular frontal crashes.

Evaluation of Brain Rotational Injury Criteria (BrIC) in vehicle frontal crashes.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to estimate strains in the human brain in regulatory, research, and due care frontal crashes by simulating those impacts. In addition, brain strain simulations were estimated for belted human volunteer tests and in impacts between two players in National Football League (NFL), some with no injury and some with mild Traumatic Brain Injuries (mTBI). METHODS: The brain strain responses were determined using version 5 of the Global Human Body Modeling Consortium (GHBMC) 50th percentile human brain model. One hundred and sixty simulations with the brain model were conducted using rotational velocities and accelerations of Anthropomorphic Test Devices (ATD's) or those of human volunteers in sled or crash tests, as inputs to the model and strain related responses like Maximum Principal Strains (MPS) and Cumulative Strain Damage Measure (CSDM) in various regions of the brain were monitored. The simulated vehicle tests ranged from sled tests at 24 and 32 kph delta-V with three-point belts without airbags to full scale crash and sled tests at 56 kph and a series of Research Mobile Deformable Barrier (RMDB) tests described in Prasad et al. RESULTS: The severity of rotational input into the model as represented by BrIC, averaged between 0.5 and 1.2 for the various test conditions, and as high as 1.5 for an individual case. The MPS responses for the various test conditions averaged between 0.28 and 0.86 and as high as 1.3 in one test condition. The MPS responses in the brain for volunteers, low velocity sled, and NCAP tests were similar to those in the no-mTBI group in the NFL cases and consistent with real world accident data. The MPS responses of the brain in angular crash and sled tests were similar to those in the mTBI group. CONCLUSIONS: The brain strain estimations do not indicate the likelihood of severe-to-fatal brain injuries in the crash environments studied in this paper. However, using the risk functions associated with BrIC, severe-to-fatal brain injuries (AIS4+) are predicted in several environments in which they are not observed or expected.

Understanding the new trends in pedestrian injury distribution and mechanism through data linkage and modeling.

The objectives of this study were to 1) collect and analyze recent pedestrian crash cases for better understanding of the pedestrian injury distribution and mechanism, 2) use computational simulations to reconstruct pedestrian cases and estimate potential benefit of pedestrian automatic emergency braking (PedAEB) in reducing pedestrian injury risks, and 3) estimate how future pedestrian crash distribution might influence priorities for pedestrian protection. Analyses of national crash-injury dataset showed that the overall number of pedestrians in crashes as well as the serious and fatal pedestrian injuries in the U.S. have been increasing in recent years. Striking vehicle type has changed (i.e., decreased proportion of passenger cars and increase of SUVs and pickup trucks) from 20 years ago mirroring changes in the fleet distribution of vehicle sales. A total of 432 pedestrian injury cases were generated by linking the Michigan trauma data and police-reported crash data from 2013 to 2018. Among the linked cases, pickup trucks and SUVs were involved in crashes with more injuries across body regions. Notably, AIS 3+ chest injuries occur at almost the same rate as lower extremity injuries. A method, combining MADYMO simulations (n = 3,500), response surface model, and data mining, was developed to reconstruct 25 linked pedestrian crash cases to estimate the effectiveness of PedAEB. Based on national field data and MADYMO simulations, PedAEB was estimated to be effective in reducing the risk of head and lower extremity injuries but is relatively less effective in reducing the risk of chest injuries. The increased proportions of SUVs and pickup trucks in the vehicle fleet and the higher penetration of PedAEB may highlight the importance of future research into chest injury risk for pedestrian protection.

Deformation patterns in WorldSID 50th percentile dummy instrumented with IR-TRACC and RibEye™ in different loading configurations.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of different loading configurations on the WorldSID 50th percentile male dummy instrumented either with the Infra-Red Telescoping Rod for the Assessment of Chest Compression (IR-TRACC) or the RibEye™ rib deflection measurement system. Methods: The optical sensors of the RibEye system were used to capture the multipoint deformation of the dummy at frontal and rearward off-center locations in addition to the center of the rib location. The experimental setup consisted of 2 types of loadings: Low severity and high severity. Low-severity loading was performed by deploying a fixture-mounted side airbag on the dummy and high-severity loading was achieved by deploying a driver front airbag mounted in a similar fashion. The low-severity condition aimed at deforming the dummy's ribs locally at off-center locations where the RibEye light emitting diodes (LEDs) were positioned to capture the deformations at those locations. The high-severity condition aimed at loading the dummy at high speed in lateral and oblique directions similar to what is experienced by dummies in side impacts. Results: In the low-severity tests, the peak deflections, in terms of length change, were approximately 15-20 mm, whereas for the high-severity cases the peak deflections were in the range of 30-40 mm for both IR-TRACC and RibEye cases. Conclusions: For similar physical insults, dummies with the IR-TRACC and RibEye systems showed varying results for both length changes and the shoulder forces depending on the severity and direction of loading. Under purely lateral loading, the mid-length changes with the RibEye and the 1D IR-TRACC were comparable. In the oblique loading conditions, more differences were seen with the 2 systems depending on the impact direction. The shoulder forces consistently differed between the 2 systems. In the frontal oblique low-severity cases, the ribs pivoted along the spine end and the length change was not found to be a suitable parameter to quantify rib deformation in such loading scenarios.

Evaluation of full pelvic ring stresses using a bilateral static gait-phase finite element modeling method.

Trauma to the pelvis is debilitating and often needs fixation intervention. In 58% of patients with this trauma, the injuries can lead to permanent disability, preventing the return to jobs. Of all unsuccessful fixation procedures, 42% are caused by failures of the method, sometimes due to mobilization during healing. Patients would benefit by havibridgetv@comcast.netng fixation hardware in place that enabled ambulation. During walking the bilateral hip joint plus leg and trunk muscle forces, including those from hip motion, can induce torsion into the pelvic ring and across the joint cartilages, and affect the internal stresses of the pelvis. For an accurate understanding, fixation that bridges the bilateral innominate bones needs to be evaluated considering all of these factors, and the affect on the stresses throughout the pelvic ring. Yet there is no bilateral, comprehensive method to do so in the literature. In this study a method was developed that incorporates all of the necessary factors in four bilateral, static, finite element models representing eight gait phases. The resulting stress migration through the full pelvic ring and pubic symphysis displacements were demonstrated under these conditions. In subsequent work, fixation improvements can be applied to these models to evaluate the change in internal stresses, joint displacements and deformations of the hardware, leading to a better quality of design and permitting ambulation during healing for the patient.

An Experimental and Numerical Study of Hybrid III Dummy Response to Simulated Underbody Blast Impacts.

Anthropometric test devices (ATDs) such as the Hybrid III dummy have been widely used in automotive crash tests to evaluate the risks of injury at different body regions. In recent years, researchers have started using automotive ATDs to study the high-speed vertical loading response caused by underbody blast impacts. This study analyzed the Hybrid III dummy responses to short-duration, large magnitude vertical accelerations in a laboratory setup. Two unique test conditions were investigated using a horizontal sled system to simulate underbody blast loading conditions. The biomechanical responses in terms of pelvis acceleration, chest acceleration, lumbar spine force, head accelerations, and neck forces were measured. Subsequently, a series of finite element (FE) analyses were performed to simulate the physical tests. The correlation between the Hybrid III test and numerical model was evaluated using the correlation and analysis (cora) version 3.6.1. The score for the Wayne State University (WSU) FE model was 0.878 and 0.790 for loading conditions 1 and 2, respectively, in which 1.0 indicated a perfect correlation between the experiment and the simulated response. With repetitive vertical impacts, the Hybrid III dummy pelvis showed a significant increase in peak acceleration accompanied by a rupture of the pelvis foam and flesh. The revised WSU Hybrid III model indicated high stress concentrations at the same location, providing a possible explanation for the material failure in actual Hybrid III tests.

Parametric analysis of the biomechanical response of head subjected to the primary blast loading--a data mining approach.

Traumatic brain injury due to primary blast loading has become a signature injury in recent military conflicts and terrorist activities. Extensive experimental and computational investigations have been conducted to study the interrelationships between intracranial pressure response and intrinsic or 'input' parameters such as the head geometry and loading conditions. However, these relationships are very complicated and are usually implicit and 'hidden' in a large amount of simulation/test data. In this study, a data mining method is proposed to explore such underlying information from the numerical simulation results. The heads of different species are described as a highly simplified two-part (skull and brain) finite element model with varying geometric parameters. The parameters considered include peak incident pressure, skull thickness, brain radius and snout length. Their interrelationship and coupling effect are discovered by developing a decision tree based on the large simulation data-set. The results show that the proposed data-driven method is superior to the conventional linear regression method and is comparable to the nonlinear regression method. Considering its capability of exploring implicit information and the relatively simple relationships between response and input variables, the data mining method is considered to be a good tool for an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms of blast-induced brain injury. As a general method, this approach can also be applied to other nonlinear complex biomechanical systems.

Characterization of Human Rib Biomechanical Responses due to Three-Point Bending.

In the elderly population, rib fracture is one of the most common injuries sustained in motor vehicle crashes. The current study was conducted to predict the biomechanical fracture responses of ribs with respect to age, gender, height, weight and percentage of ash content. Three-point bending experiments were conducted on 278 isolated rib samples extracted from 82 cadaver specimens (53 males and 29 females between the ages of 21 and 87 years) for 6th and 7th levels of ribs. Statistical analyses were carried out to identify differences based on age and gender. It was found that, in comparison to males, females had significantly lower values for maximum bending moments, slopes of bending moment-angle curves, and average cortical-bone thickness (p<0.05). Samples of ribs taken from elderly specimens failed at lower values of fracture moments than those from younger specimens, and had lower slopes of bending moment-angle curves, both in males and females (p<0.05). The generalized estimated equations were developed to predict the values of biomechanical response and average cortical thickness based on age, gender, height and weight of individual specimens. Results from the current study illustrate that biomechanical responses and rib cortical thicknesses are functions of age, gender, height and weight. However, the current study is limited to a quasi-static loading scheme, which is different from real crash conditions. Hence, rib-material properties, which are dependent on strain rate, and are needed for wholebody finite element models representing different populations, still require more research.

Testing and Modeling the Responses of Hybrid III Crash-Dummy Lower Extremity under High-speed Vertical Loading.

Anthropometric test devices (ATDs), such as the Hybrid III crash-test dummy, have been used to simulate lowerextremity responses to military personnel subjected to loading conditions from anti-vehicular (AV) landmine blasts. Numerical simulations [e.g., finite element (FE) analysis] of such high-speed vertical loading on ATD parts require accurate material parameters that are dependent on strain rate. This study presents a combined experimental and computational study to calibrate the rate-dependent properties of three materials on the lower extremities of the Hybrid III dummy. The three materials are heelpad foam, foot skin, and lower-leg flesh, and each has properties that can affect simulation results of forces and moments transferred to the lower extremities. Specifically, the behavior of the heel-pad foam was directly calibrated through standard compression tests, and the properties of the foot skin and lower-leg flesh were calibrated based on an optimization procedure in which the material parameters were adjusted for best fit between the calculated force-deflection responses and least squares of the experimental data. The material models updated with strain-rate effects were then integrated into an ATD full-body FE model (FEM), which was used to simulate vertical impulsive loading responses at different speeds. Results of validations using this model demonstrated basic replication of experimentally obtained response patterns of the tibia. The bending moments matched those calculated from the experimental data 25-40% more accurately than those obtained from the original model, and axial forces were 60-90% more accurate. However, neither the original nor the modified models well captured whole-body response patterns, and further improvements are required. As a generalized approach, the optimization method presented in this paper can be applied to characterize material constants for a wide range of materials.