Anthropomorphic dummies are widely used by research laboratories to study safety problems either in car accident reconstruction or in simulated collisions. The design and construction of such models are strongly improved for frontal impacts but need to be adjusted to other specific conditions such as lateral impacts or biomechanical realism. The purpose of this paper is to review the design and construction of a 50th percentile crash dummy and to show the evolution of the model based on biomechanical data which allows a more accurate investigation in some specific conditions. This work was elaborated at the laboratory of biomechanics of onser (france) under the sponsorship of the french administration and partly with eec funds for the adaptation to lateral impact. (a)
Abstract