Citation

Adalian C, Nowakowski N, Zeitouni R. 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

Up to 2008, in the Euro NCAP rating, the assessment of the adult protection in pole test was only made through the head criteria. From 2009, the pole test in the new "overall rating" Euro NCAP protocol will take into accounts all body regions (head, chest, abdomen and pelvis). The aim of this study is to analyse the scatter of biomechanical criteria linked to these different body regions. Three phases were defined: Phase 1: analysis of a large number of pole tests in order to identify what body region was the most scattered. Phase 2: quantification of the scatter linked to the car, seat and dummy set-up. Ten trials of dummy set-up in three laboratories and on three types of vehicles were analysed. The first one of these trials was for reference, since it followed rigorously the vehicle and dummy set-up protocols proposed by Euro NCAP. The other trials were made to assess the scattering by varying several parameters such as vehicle mass, type of dummy, operator. These trials gave us the maximum scattering that could exist and that can be reproduced in dynamic tests. Phase 3: quantification of the consequences of the dummy positioning on the pole test's dummy readings. Indeed, several pole tests will be carried out on identical vehicles with different dummy positioning. The results of this study will have to be linked to their consequences on the biomechanical criteria, in particular on the chest and abdomen. Recommendations are given to improve the dummy set-up procedure by taking into account these possible scattering of the dummy positioning and by proposing counter measure to avoid them in a future protocol. The full text of this paper may be found at: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv21/09-0096.pdf