BME Seminar

The automobile is one of the most convenient inventions through the history of man.  This convenience, however, comes with a potential harmful price due to motor vehicle crashes.  In 2009, 33,808 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes while 2,217,000 occupants were injured.  Cervical spine injuries in rear impact collisions are very common and result in enormous societal cost, with estimates on the order of $8.0 billion annually.  Most injuries resulting from rear impact accidents are associated with cervical spine and are a minor injury classified as an Abbreviated Injury Scale No. 1 (AIS 1).  Even though these injuries are classified as minor, they account for huge costs to both individuals as well as society.  Moreover, according to insurance claims, 70% of all bodily injury claims and 43% of medical costs were resulted from these injuries.  In order to reduce possibility of cervical spine injuries, car manufacturers have developed and improved seats with restraint systems by using anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) as safety testing tools.  Rear impact ATDs, e.g. , RID3D and BioRID II, should accurately reproduce the kinematic and kinetic responses of the head/neck, spine and pelvis of humans known as biofidelity.  In order to achieve these goals, the ATD’s biofidelity needs to be quantified in rear impact conditions at varying impact velocities in a realistic testing environment.   Despite the fact that rear impact events have been studied extensively, there is no consensus as to the exact mechanism of injury or most relevant injury criterion.  Therefore, the objective of this proposal is to evaluate the biofidelity of rear impact ATDs by comparing their dynamic responses with post mortem human subjects (PMHS) in realistic testing conditions and to investigate correlation between cervical spine injuries and head-neck kinematics/kinetics of PMHS in rear impact conditions.  This study will contribute not only to assist car manufacturers in improving seat designs to maximize safety but also to help ATD manufacturers produce more biofidelic rear impact ATDs.