Development of surrogate child restraints for testing of occupant sensing and classification systems. Submitted to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

This report describes the design and development of a set of surrogate child restraints that are intended for use in developing and testing occupant sensing and classification systems. Detailed measurements were made of the geometry and mass characteristics of 34 commercial child restraints, including infant restraints, convertibles, combination restraints, and boosters. The restraints were installed in three test seats with appropriately sized crash dummies to obtain data on seat-surface pressure patterns and the position and orientation of the restraint with belt loading. The data were used to construct two surrogate child restraints with removable components. The convertible surrogate can simulate a rear-facing infant restraint with or without a base, a rear-facing convertible, or a forward-facing convertible. The booster surrogate can represent a high-back belt-positioning booster, a backless booster, or a forward-facing-only restraint with a five-point harness. The surrogates were designed to meet geometric and mass targets obtained by taking the mean values for analogous dimensions in each child restraint category. Data analyses showed that the dimensions and performance of the surrogates quantitatively represent the commercial restraints in each category.