Abstract
Keywords Biomechanics, crash, simulation, abdomen, injury.
Abstract The growing intensity of automotive traffic is accompanied by fluent elevation of frequency of car crashes joined in many cases with serious injuries and/or deaths of occupants. These facts strongly influence the efforts of car designers to improve the passive safety parameters, e.g. the restrain systems of cars, protecting above all the head, neck and thorax. In this way the most serious consequences of accidents should be restricted and ensure the passengers to survive the crash. Till now, less attention was paid to the protection of abdominal organs, whose injuries during traffic accidents can have very serious consequences.
The work shows the simulation of a real frontal car to car crash with offset between a passenger car and a truck. The aim of the task is the simulation of the passenger car driver behavior during the first crucial milliseconds of the accident. Based on police data (photos, accident plans and speed recorder), the analysis of the accident is thoroughly done and the deceleration of the crashing car is derived. Basic passenger car interior geometry is obtained and reconstructed as a car interior finite element model. Applying the deceleration to our simple car interior model including human body model of proper anthropometrical properties, the behavior of the body is computed and compared to the reality with relation to abdominal injuries.
We use a partially deformable human body model developed in close cooperation with ESI Group International and equipped by material models optionally including ruptures with measured mechanical properties of human liver and spleen. The model comes up from the rigid body based model where the abdominal and thoracic parts are supplied by deformable parts. Hence, the influence of the external load to the thoracic and abdominal organs can be simulated in detail. The human body model is merged with the simple car interior finite element model, belted and the deceleration come up from the accident analysis is applied.
According to the medical report of the male driver, the crucial injuries are ruptures of spleen and right liver lobe. During the simulation using the PAM computational package, the same situation can be observed. Using appropriate material model and analyzing the process during the first 250 ms, the stress pressure in the right liver lobe and the spleen grows and it is followed by rupture of the particular tissue.