The Complex Lower Leg (CLL), originally developed to assess antipersonnel(AP) mine injuries, was identified as a suitable surrogate to develop an injury assessment methodology for foot/ankle injuries sustained by occupants exposed to anti-vehicular (AV) blast landmines. The objective of this work was to evaluate the CLL performance, with the best available techniques, for its use in a new application: AV mine testing. The approach was to use the standard Hybrid III instrumented lower leg to set the input conditions to which the CLL was submitted. The first part of the work consisted in 'low' severity testing. Owen et al (2001) and Funk et al (2002b) studies on post mortem human surrogates (PMHS) were recreated in order to compare CLL and PHMS responses. The CLL, submitted to non-injurious (based on Owen, 2001) and injurious (based on Funk, 2002b) conditions, showed realistic results. The second part of the study was to test the CLL under 'high' severity loading conditions representative to that of AV blast mine conditions. The results of this second testing suggest that the CLL might require some modifications to improve its biofidelity in terms of foot/ankle injury prediction for these specific loading conditions. Finally, the work also includes the results of the tibia axial force measured with a load cell installed on the CLL for the first time. In conclusion, the Complex Lower Leg showed satisfying results within the scope of the current work and thus, is believed to be a suitable tool to evaluate foot/ankle sustained by anti-vehicular blast landmine. For the covering abstract see ITRD E134311.
Abstract