A study into the kinematic response for unbelted human occupants during emergency braking

ABSTRACT

Since January 2014 more vehicles are being fitted with new active safety systems facilitating vehicle collision avoidance or mitigation by reducing the kinetic energy prior to impact, the most common being autonomous emergency braking systems. Although beneficial in reducing crash energy these safety features may influence the occupant's posture within the cabin, and require special attention for the design and development of restraints system should the occupants be out of position or unbelted. This paper reviews the current reference volunteers’ physical test, proposed by Ejima, used to validate the unbelted kinematics of active human computer model and proposes a new set of generic biomechanical kinematic responses based on OM4IS sled test data, which are judged more representative to an unbelted occupant's reaction. New kinematics corridors for head and torso angular change in a typical 1 ‘g’ frontal scenario are provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflex
• kinematics
• biomechanics
• occupant protection
• active safety
• human modelling
• extreme braking

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr Joerg Hoffmann and Alexander Diederich, of Toyoda Gosei, Michael Freisinger of O.K Engineering, Robin Van Der Made of TASS International and Riske Meijer of TNO for their continued support during my thesis that provided the base of this paper. Dr Philip Huber and Dr Adrian Prüggler of TU Graz for providing the OM4IS led test data for this research.