This research has two primary goals: - the characterization of the human bone resistance, - the establishment of a method to predict the injuries for living persons involved in collisions, from the results of tests with instrumented dead bodies whose bone characteristics are known. For the characterization of the rib cage, during autopsy of the subjects, the 4th, 5th and 6th ribs are collected. The left and right fourth ribs are used for mineralization tests, while the fifth and sixth ribs are used for mechanical tests. An analysis involving normed principal components was performed on a sample of 150 human subjects whose eight bone characteristics were known. It was thus possible to define an indicator of skeletal resistance: the bcf (bone condition factor) computed on the basis of rib-test parameters. This indicator allows the relative effectiveness of various protection systems to be judged on the basis of a small number of tests. An investigation of relationships between injury levels and the physical measurements recorded during occurrence of the main impact types was also conducted taking the bcf into account; this yields a better accuracy of the indicated tolerance levels. Testing procedure for skull-bone characterization, similar to the one used for rib characterization is being developed.
Abstract