Research On Driver Thoracic Dynamic Response And Injury Prevention In Frontal Impact

How to furthest improve protection on occupant in car crash is the key to theresearch on automotive passive safety. With the common use of seat belts and airbags incars now, not only does it greatly reduce the injury risk of occupant head and neck infrontal impacts, but also it is good for the chest protection. However, due to complexity ofthoracic biological structural characteristics and limited living space for the driver infrontal impact, the driver chesr protection is not very satisfactory. To further investigate thethoracic injury and improve protection on the driver chest in frontal impact, this paper hasanalyzed influence factors of the driver thoracic injury, and based on this, effectivecountermeasures are proposed to reduce the injury risk. This paper has conducted theresearch on the following aspects.1. On the basis of literature on the occupant thoracic injury, it has analyzed andsummarized in detail the thoracic biomechanical characteristics, injury mechanism, injurycriteria and thoracic injury assessment method in frontal impact.2. An occupant restraint system model of driver side has been developed byusing MADYMO and modified according to engineering basic principle. The model hasbeen correlated based on a phsical crash test.3. Based on the validated model, influence factor of the driver chest protectionhas been studied by the simulation method combined multi-rigid body analysis with finiteelement analysis, including:(1) Effect on the driver chest protection has been investigated by various vehiclecrash pulses. The crash pulse is simplified into a two-phrase trapezoid pulse, and then theinfluence factors on occupant thoracic injury are studied. The reasonable crash pulse isobtained by optimization analysis, which can enhance the driver chest protection.(2) Influence on the driver chest protection is further studied by matching of occupant restraint system. After sensitivity analysis of occupant restraint factors is done,the influence on the driver thoracic injury has been analyzed by matching of some moresensitive factors. As the research has showed, recommendation areas through the matchingof occupant restraint system are in existence, which can alleviate driver thoracic injurysignificantly.4. Based on the analysis of the driver thoracic injury, some certaincountermeasures are analyzed by simulation method, which can enhance the driver chestprotection.In all, the research depicted above can efficiently improve effect on the driverchest protection, which can be used as an analysis approach for protection on the otherparts of the occupant and is good for occupant safety analysis. These results are of activesignification for research on driver’s thoracic injury and development of injurycountermeasures technology.