Research On The Driver Protection Under Vehicle Frontal Impact

As traffic accidents cause a lot of casualties every year, it has become the focusof common concern all over the world. Although automobile industry in China hasachieved great progress, vehicle exports from China is far behind other vehiclepowers. The only way to develop Chinese vehicles is to expand overseas automobilemarkets.With the improvement of the public’s awareness of vehicle safety, customerspay more attention to the safety performance when they choose vehicles. In order toexpand overseas automobile markets, the outstanding safety performance of vehiclemust be valued. Meanwhile, the Chinese vehicles can win a good image.A driver’s restraint system simulation model of vehicle frontal impact is built.By optimizing the sysytem parameters and studying the lower extremity injury, thispaper improves the occupant protection of restraint system.The assessment content of some important NCAPs are researched, especially thetesting and protection criteria of frontal impact. Besides, the differences of evaluationmethods and front impact testing from those NCAPs are analyzed.This paper describes the method to build a driver’s restraint system simulationmodel, and focuses on introducing the main parameters of restraint system and itsfunctions. A comparion of the dummy injuries between the simulation results and thereal vehicle crash tests, the result proves that the simulation model is reliable.In order to optimize the overall injury, including head injury, neck injury, chestinjury and leg injury, the dual-response surface method is applied to the robust designof the driver’s restraint system in vehicle frontal impact based on the NHTSA-NCAP.A comparion of the dummy’s motion response and injuries, the results of theparameter optimization design are analyzed.Considering that the current NHTSA-NCAP doesn’t pay enough attention tolower extremity injury, which usually is not life-threatening but easy to causedisability. In order to enhance the effectiveness of the restraint system to protect thedriver, the lower extremity protection is studied. With the analysis result of the lowerextremity injury mechanism and evaluation criteria, the improvement plans areresearched by the simulation technology and the response surface analysismethodology.