The main purpose of this study was to investigate the importance of introducing crash-rate sensitivity factors into the computer simulations of side impact crashes. The effects of two crash-rate parameters were studied: (1) the crash rate sensivity of the car structure; and (2) the crash rate sensivity of the door-padding. A previously developed, lumped spring-mass model was employed and was solved by using the CRUSH program. The simulations were performed for two crash speeds and for several cases of door-padding thickness. The effect of the door-padding thickness was approached in two different ways. One approach was to keep the occupant-door spacing constant and to change the total door thickness to account for the padding thickness. The other approach was to keep the size of the car structure constant while changing the occupant-door spacing to accommodate changes in padding thickness. Three thoracic injury criteria were calculated and plotted as functions of the padding thickness. These injury criteria are: the old and new Thoracic Trauma Index (TTI), and the Viscous Criterion (V*C). The influence of both rate factors and padding thickness on the criteria was shown.
Abstract