Accidents involving pedestrian impact have been targeted as an area of automobile safety worthy of study and research. Among the many approaches to this problem is to design automobiles for less severe pedestrian injuries. Of particular concern are injuries to the pedestrian's head caused by impact with the automobile body. Redesign of automobiles for pedestrian safety is obviously a costly undertaking. However, it is reasonable to expect that incorporating simple modifications into existing designs can reduce the number and severity of pedestrian head injuries quickly and at low cost. New designs can be proposed and prototypes built and tested using established techniques. However, in order to make pedestrian head injury mitigation more appealing, a low-cost design technique must be found. Therefore, finite element analysis (FEA) is applied to mitigation of pedestrian head injury. Design prototypes are modelled and impacted by a simulated pedestrian head form using readily available finite element code, namely, ANSYS and DYNA3D. Results are analyzed, animations studied, and further design improvements proposed and tested. This may be followed by verification with a test impact of the new prototype. FEA promises to make pedestrian head injury mitigation appealing, cost effective, and be incorporated into automobile design. (A)
Abstract