Effect Of The Accelerator Pedal On The Driver’s Lower Extremity Injury

In recent years, with the rapid development of Chinese economic, residents of car ownership showed obvious growth trend. Vehicle s had provided people with convenience, at the same time, also brought many social problems. The study showed that the lower extremity injury accounted for nearly 1/3 of all moderate damage(AIS 2+) in collision accidents. In all types of injury, the lower extremity injuries were not fatal as head and chest injuries, but it led to disabilities easily, bringing great spiritual and physical pain to the victims. Therefore, it is significant to study the lower extremity injuries of drivers.At present, many domestic and foreign scholars often ignored or simplified the pedal system model in the study of lower extremity injuries, which were difficult to ensure the reliability of the results. Thus, a detailed finite element model of the accelerator pedal was established. And the effect of different parameters of the accelerator pedal on the driver’s tibial force and tibia index were analysed. The main works and studies of this paper are as follows:1) According to how the drivers’ feet stepping on the accelerator pedal, and the installation of the pedal in the vehicle, two different accelerator pedal brackets were designed. A series of pendulum impact tests on the accelerator pedal were performed to obtain the response of the accelerator pedal under different impact speeds.2) A finite element model of the pedal was established. In order to obtain high similarity, many factors were analysed, including element size, type and formulation. Then, pedal model was optimized according to the effects of the factors.3) The effects of friction coefficient, the pedal stroke, rotational stiffness and breaking torque on the lower extremity injury were studied and the corresponding conclusions were presented.The study showed that the tetrahedral element was not suitable for the construction of the pedal model. The full integrated formulation would increase the stiffness of the model, and resulted in less time domain of the result curve. The constant stress element formulation and the appropriate hourglass energy control parameters could make the simulation results of the model have high similarity with the experimental results. According to the results, rotational stiffness and pedal breaking torque had great influence on the tibia force. While the pedal stroke and the breaking torque had great influence on the tibia index. The effect of pedal invasion on the tibia force was not obvious. When the pedal invasion increased, the driver’s tibia index increased significantly.