Design, analysis and experimental study of a novel side thorax impactor to be used in pedestrian protection tests for flat front vehicles

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2021-10

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Saraç Karadeniz, Sevgi

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Pedestrian protection is crucial and the vehicle manufacturers put more and more effort to make vehicles safer for pedestrians in case of pedestrian involved accidents. Injuries and fatalities are very frequent and severe in pedestrian involved accidents because the pedestrians are much more vulnerable when compared to the vehicle occupants as they do not have any protection like airbags or seatbelts. The current pedestrian protection regulations focus on the tests of bonnet type passenger cars for the head, upper leg and lower leg regions that are performed by using the headform and legform impactors. However, no tests are defined to evaluate thorax injuries. The number of flat front vehicles is increasing within the cities. Additionally, the number of Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) and Light Truck Vehicles (LTVs) which are bonnet type vehicles but with relatively high bonnets and bumpers is increasing. Thorax impacts and thorax injuries are more frequently encountered in pedestrian involved accidents with these types of vehicles. Furthermore, thorax region injuries become almost as severe as head injuries for especially flat front vehicles. In this study, a novel patentable thorax impactor has been designed to evaluate thorax injuries in pedestrian involved accidents. The design has been firstly validated with Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Prototype of the thorax impactor has been manufactured and physical pendulum tests have been performed for the biofidelity validation. The test results have shown that ThImp-PED has an acceptable biofidelity. A novel pedestrian protection test procedure for thorax impact with for flat-front vehicles has been proposed. Pedestrian tests have been performed with the Linear Impactor Test System by using the novel thorax impactor and the proposed test procedure. The pedestrian test results have shown that the thorax impactor can be used as the impactor in pedestrian protection tests to evaluate the vehicle’s performance in pedestrian safety in terms of the thorax injury criterion. A patentable design of the pedestrian thorax impactor has been achieved.

Subject Keywords

Vehicle safety, Pedestrian protection, Pedestrian protection tests, Thorax impactor, Test regulations, Flat front vehicles, Finite element analysis

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/94569

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Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

S. Saraç Karadeniz, “Design, analysis and experimental study of a novel side thorax impactor to be used in pedestrian protection tests for flat front vehicles,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2021.