The effectiveness of Q6 and PIPER 6-year-old models on quantification of the change of child sitting posture with AEB and its impact on child’s injures in frontal crash

Abstract

Objective

Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) has a direct impact on the effectiveness of the restraint systems in providing protection toward child occupants. The objective is to evaluate the effectiveness of Q6 and PIPER 6-year-old models in predicting the kinematic responses of child models, and further to quantify and analyze the child injuries during a frontal crash with and without AEB.

Methods

The finite element model of a booster seat has been validated through a full vehicle test. Based on the validated finite element model, two sled test finite element models for the rear seat booster seat with Q6 and PIPER 6-year-old models were constructed. AEB condition was imposed on above the two models and the kinematic responses of sitting posture including head, neck and chest have been compared in detail. The peak head displacement and neck curvature of Q6 dummy and PIPER 6-year-old models have been compared with the test data from child volunteers. Based on the child model with better predictive capability for kinematic response under AEB, child injuries were evaluated and analyzed for the 50 km/h frontal crash test with and without AEB. Last, this study discussed the effects of internal neck and chest structure difference between Q6 and PIPER 6-year-old models on child kinematic response and the injury risks.

Results

Under AEB condition, PIPER 6-year-old model has higher head displacement and lower trunk displacement than Q6 dummy model, and the peak head displacement and neck curvature of PIPER 6-year-old model are similar to the test data of child volunteers. During the 50 km/h frontal crash simulation with pre-crash AEB, the HIC₁₅, Head acceleration 3 ms, N_ij decrease 43.7%, 19.6% and 28.8%, respectively and the chest deflection increases 15.5% compared to the simulation without AEB.

Conclusions

This study shows that PIPER 6-year-old model is more suitable for the quantification of sitting posture change under AEB due to its higher biofidelity. The pre-crash AEB can substantially reduce the head, neck injuries. But it also increases the chest injury due to the chest pre-compression. Future efforts are recommended to lower the child chest injury by integrating AEB with active pre-tensioning seatbelts.

Keywords:

• Finite element analysis
• Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB)
• booster seat
• occupant kinematics
• injury risk

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of Goodbaby International Holdings Limited for providing the validation data for the finite element model for the rear seat booster seat based on 50% overlap MPDB frontal crash test at 50 km/h specified by C-NCAP.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work is funded by 2021 Jiangsu High-value Patent Cultivation Program (upgrade category) under Grant [8411123002]; Goodbaby International under grant [8421123089]; Jiangsu University Faculty Startup Fund under grant [5501120014]; and Jiangsu Shuangchuang Doctor Program under grant [1711120022].