Crash test dummies

Two life size crash test dummies, used to demonstrate the importance of wearing seat belts in moving cars in the 1970s, are constructed from plasticized PVC. Their surfaces are shiny and discoloured and their forms have softened and distorted due to the migration of plasticizer. Glass dishes have been placed in the well-sealed showcase to collect dripping plasticizer. 

Foster, J.K., Kortge, J.O., and Wolanin, M.J., Hybrid 111-A BiomechanicaUy-Based Crash Test Dummy, Stapp Car Crash Conference, pp. 975-1014, SAE Paper No. 770938, Society of Automotive Engineers, Warrendale, PA, 1977. 

Anthropomorphic test devices, commonly called crash test dummies, come in a variety of sizes corresponding to males and females from infants to adults in the fifth, fiftieth, and ninety-fifth percentile of the American population. They are nsed to determine how bodies are affected in a crash—what they hit within the interior of the vehicle, how they are ejected, and what injuries may result. The height, weight, and body measurements of the test dummies can be modified to model the actual participants in a specific accident. Injuries that commonly result from a vehicle accident are found in the spine, shoulder, and knee. 

I ve seen many a cocky screenwriter sure that he or she, in a minute or two, without any study of games, can swoop in and zap these problems into oblivion. These screenwriters quickly find their brains deep-fried and served up as snack food to weary game designers and programmers who knew from the start that linear writers are the crash-test dummies of interactive entertainment. 

The crash test dummy in the driver s seat is being restrained by a seat belt and an inflated air bag. The dummy in the back seat, not wearing a seat belt, is being propelled through the cabin toward the front windshield. 

Mechanically constructed manikins, or dummies, are used extensively in motor vehicle crash testing and for evaluating aircraft escape systems and seating. Several have been developed for these purposes (AGARD AR-330, 1997), some of which are commercially available. 

FIGURE 10.10 Hybrid m anthropometric dummy designed for use in motor-vdiicle frontal crash tests, showing elements of constmction and sensors. (AGARD-AR-330,1997.)... 

Crash suitability is explained in Fig. 75. Handling strength must result in crash-suitable behaviour. SDAT is the time required to achieve this crash suitability. The crash tests were performed with a double-sided air bag and unbelted dummies (Hybrid III) at 23°C and 50% r.h. 

Numerical methods have been recently introduced for the simulation of various configuration automotive crash tests. In this field of mechanical analysis, our aim is to evaluate the coupling between the car and the dummy during a frontal crash. Some studies [1, 2] demonstrated that it was possible to define such kind of systems with a sufficient level of repeatability and to correlate them with multibody models. 

Haddadin, S., Albu-Schaffer, A., Hirzinger, G. Dummy crash-tests for the evaluation of rigid human-robot impacts. In lARP International Workshop on Technical Challenges and for Dependable Robots in Human Environments (lARP 2007), Rome, Italy (2007)... 

AGARD-AR-330, Anthropomorphic Dummies for Crash and Escape System Testing, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Neuilly sur Seine, France, 1997. 

The analysis supposes that the car (or sled) is fixed to the reference frame and that the dummy is accelerated forward by the opposite of the acceleration-time history. This history is measured and filtered on the middle pillar of the car during a real crash or sled test, see figure 9. We are working with a relative motion between the car and the dummy such a description involves the neglecting of the car rotation (coriolis effect). To obtain the total acceleration on the dummy pans, the calculated acceleration and the prescribed one have to be added. 

Belt route another problem is to find the routes of the shoulder and lap belts on the dummy, with the evidence that these routes may often change during a crash, corresponding to transverse slip not modelled in Madymo. Another reason to treat this problem analytically is that we wanted to simulate earlier tests, where the connecting points of the strap on the dummy were not known. Therefore, we chose to model the route and calculate geometrical characteristics of the belt with a pre-processor, in the initial position of the dummy. It is explained below how to control this parameter. 

There are a few studies that have indicated that seat belts are not always practical. In 1988 the Advanced Safety Studies Institute spent over 100,000 in grant money to determine if seat belts are practical, necessary, or advisable safety devices on forklifts. The testing used 4,000 - and 6,000 -pound-capacity counterbalanced remote controlled forklifts and anthropometric (humanlike) dummies—the kind used in auto crashes. 

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