Effects of the bumper stiffness characteristics on the pedestrian head injuries and the lower extremities injuries

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8484.2023.01.002

Abstract

Abstract:

The effect of bumper stiffness characteristics on the pedestrian head and lower extremity injuries was investigated by using a vehicle Finite Element (FE) analysis model of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the USA. Some bumper stiffness curves for 20, 40, and 60 km/h crash speeds were obtained by the FE method. The effects of bumper stiffnesses of 0~1.27 MN /m on pedestrian head and lower extremity injuries were conducted by using a multi-body simulation method. The results show that different bumper stiffnesses have almost no effect on the overall kinematic response of pedestrians, but have an extremity effect on the injuries for pedestrian head and lower limb, especially for lower limb injuries. The pedestrian's head maximum contact force is 4.28 kN and 4.26 kN respectively, and the pedestrian's lower leg maximum contact force is 3.94 kN and 9.36 kN respectively, at the stiffness of the bumper contact force-deformation curve corresponding to 20 km/h and 60 km/h. Therefore, the risk of pedestrian lower limb injury increases with the increase of bumper stiffness.

Key words: automotive safety, passive safety, bumper stiffness characteristic, head injury, lower extremity injury, kinematic response, Finite Element (FE)

CLC Number:

U461.91

LIU Tianquan, WANG Bingyu, WU He, ZOU Jun, MAO Mingxiang. Effects of the bumper stiffness characteristics on the pedestrian head injuries and the lower extremities injuries[J]. Journal of Automotive Safety and Energy, 2023, 14(1): 17-22.

Figures/Tables 8

References 19

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