Abstract:

Front impact safety is important to early develop vehicles. Pendulum impacts were performed on a
dummy to investigate the influence factors to front-seated-dummy lower-leg injury. A Hybrid-III 50th male dummy
was seated on a chest calibration table. The dummy lower leg or knee was impacted by a 5-kg pendulum at 2.75
m/s. The upper-leg force F, the knee displacement D, the lower-leg-upper bending-moment MX and MY, the axial
compression FZ, and the tibia-index (TI) during impacts were measured. The results show that the α of 76° is a
special angle between the lower-leg center-line and horizontal ground, because the F, the D and MY have abrupt
changes when the impact occurres at 76°. Therefore, it will be considered that lower-leg impact-position should
be close to the knee center with the upper-leg force within an accepted range at man-machine engineering
design stage to reduce lower-leg injury. The angle α should be avoid being at the special angle of 76°.

Key words: automotive safety, crash test/pendulum impact test, dummy, impact position, knee displacement;
upper leg force, lower leg, tibia index (TI)