The Development And Validation Of A Finite Element Human Thorax Model For Automotive Impact Injury Studies

The thoracic injuries of occupants and pedestrians are common type of injuries in vehicle accidents which often result in a fatal consequence. Therefore, the human thoracic injuries had become important subjects. And it is important to study the types of thoracic injuries, injury mechanisms, injury tolerance, and develop an effective finite element model.With the methods of biomechanical, the relationship of human thoracic injury and the impact under the condition of vehicle collisions can be studied.The injury mechanisms and injury tolerance can be used to make the preventive measures and offer the theoretical principles to issue regulations about automobile impact safety.The aim of this thesis is to develop an economic and effective human thoracic finite element model to research the human thoracic injury, which involves biomechanics, vehicle impact safety, finite element analysis, etc.Dummies are commonly used by the automobile enterprises and research institutes. However, the conditions of utilizing dummies are rigorous, and the processes are expensive. Hence, the methods with human finite element model(FEM) has been widely used for impact simulations.This study utilized the nonlinear dynamic explicit FEM code for development of a human thoracic FEM which is based on one healthy Chinese male volunteer's CT pictures. The volunteer is 175cm high and weighted 68kg.The model includes the skeleton, such as vertebrates, ribs, sternum, and costal cartilage, and soft tissue, such as heart, lung and a simplified blood vessel. The entire model consisted 664,889 nodes, 547,109 solid elements, 886 shell elements, and weighed 9.322kg. The material properties of the model were defined based on the literature.Four ribs were validated first by the Kindig's classical experiment. Then the the Kroell and Chung's classical experiments were simulated to validate the frontal and lateral impact of this thorax model.The result of the simulation fit well with the test, suggesting that this model has good biofidelity and can be used in the study of the safety of occupants and pedestrians.