The objective of the frontal crashworthiness research and development effort at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is to access the safety problems associated with occupants of passenger cars involved in frontal impacts and to identify potential remedies for the problem. The focus of this paper is the identification of the safety problem for restrained right, front seat passengers. NHTSA's National Accident Sampling System files and individual state files contained in the Crashworthiness State Database were utilized to identify the crash enviroment, vehicle factors, and injury mechanisms associated with restrained passengers. The New Car Assessment Program provided data on over 200 full scale crash tests containing a restrained right, front seat dummy. Analyses utilizing the accident and crash test data are presented in this paper. A laboratory test program has been conducted to characterize head to instrument panel contacts which appears to be a major injury mechanism. The material properties and geometric characteristics of the upper instrument panel have been collected and analyzed for several of the production vehicles tested as part of the New Car Assessment Program. Dynamic and static force-deflection data was collected utilizing a head component impactor. Results of this laboratory program are presented. The MVMA 2-D computer model is being utilized to simulate the associated New Car Assessment Program crash tests to assist in the identification of mitigation concepts. The paper discusses the input data requirements, the validation process, and results of initial simulations. (A) For the covering abstract of the conference, see IRRD 837684.
Abstract