A proposal for integrating pre-crash vehicle dynamics into occupant injury protection evaluation of small electric vehicles

This research addresses integration of pre‐crash dynamics into crash phase using two different\nhuman body models. The methodology discussed is a manual way of utilizing data from two different\nsimulations and developing an interlinking chain of data to explore feasibility of integration.\nThe crash pulse was based on a collision scenario of 35 km/h (MPDB – 35 km/h ‐ 30⁰ ‐ 50% offset\nconfiguration and a generic 1g braking pulse for the pre‐crash phase was considered for Autonomous\nEmergency Braking events. Data transfer from the pre‐crash to in‐crash phase involved position, velocity, stress\nand strains for different body parts to introduce pre‐crash dynamic effects. Two parameters, chest compression\nand contact force of Human Body Models with airbag, were chosen to assess risk of injures to head and thorax.\nSimulations with different crash initiation times (650ms, 830 ms and 970 ms) were used to assess response of\nrestraint systems to changing inertial loads of occupants.\nThe simulations results indicated that this method of data transfer is viable and can be used to assess injury\nrisks for occupant. The coupling of two different simulations with different models could definitely yield\naccurate results, but, is sufficient to ensure realistic occupant kinematics and reasonable injury prediction\ncapabilities.