Citation

Schmidt KU, Muser MH. Proc. Int. Tech. Conf. Enhanced Safety Vehicles 2009; 2009.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, In public domain, Publisher National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

To ensure a high safety standard of vehicle seats in rear-end collisions, consumer tests will include specific test standards. The prevention of soft tissue neck injuries is meant to be addressed by the introduction of such standards. To date particularly EuroNCAP has developed a detailed proposal for how such seat tests should be conducted to assess the risk of whiplash associated disorders. In this study the relevance of the different parameters included in the consumer test proposal for assessing seat performance under rear-end impact conditions was analysed. A series of sled tests according to the latest proposal were performed with different seats. The performance of the seats was assessed as suggested by the proposal. In a next step a sensitivity analysis was conducted to investigate the influence of the different parameters on the final score. Based on the findings it is suggested to modify the test procedure such that criteria which are redundant or have a weak biomechanical foundation are omitted. The sensitivity analysis revealed that the final score and thus the discriminatory power of the evaluation scheme will persist such that the assessment procedure will still be able to rate the performance of the seats. The full text of this paper may be found at: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv21/09-0116.pdf