Citation

Crandall JR, Duma SM, Bass CR, Pilkey WD, Kuppa SM, Khaewpong N, Eppinger RH. Crash Prev. Injury Control 1999; 1(2): 101-112.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, Publisher Overseas Publishers Association - Gordon and Breach)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The Hybrid III 5th percentile female dummy and seven small female cadavers were instrumented and tested as out-of-position drivers in static air bag deployment tests.  Tank test pressure profiles were used to characterize inflator peak pressures and pressure inset rates of two production air bags and a prototype dual-stage system prior to their use in the static deployments. In the out-of-position tests, the chest of the surrogate was positioned in direct contact with the air bag module in an effort to create a worst case of loading environment for the thorax.  For the cadavers, post-test radiographs and autopsy investigations identified rib fractures as the most common injury and showed that the number of fractures correlated well with maximum chest compression.  The Viscous Criteria exceeded 1 m/s in nearly all dummy and cadaver tests but did not correlate well with the severity level of observed cadaver injury which was largely determined by hard-tissue rather than soft-tissue trauma.  Statistical analysis of the injury severity relative to the airbag and test parameters suggests that the pressure onset rate of the inflator is more than peak pressure in determining the severity of out-of-position injuries and should be given primary consideration in inflator depowering efforts. Statistical comparison of dummy and cadaver responses indicates acceptable biofidelity of the Hybrid III small female dummy.