To ensure a high safety standard of vehicle seats in rear-end collisions,consumer tests will include specific test standards. The prevention of soft tissue neck injuries is meant to be addressed by the introduction of such standards. To date particularly EuroNCAP has developed a detailed proposal for how such seat tests should be conducted to assess the risk of whiplash associated disorders. In this study the relevance of the different parameters included in the consumer test proposal for assessing seat performance under rear-end impact conditions was analysed. A series of sled testsaccording to the latest proposal were performed with different seats. Theperformance of the seats was assessed as suggested by the proposal. In a next step a sensitivity analysis was conducted to investigate the influence of the different parameters on the final score. Based on the findings itis suggested to modify the test procedure such that criteria which are redundant or have a weak biomechanical foundation are omitted. The sensitivity analysis revealed that the final score and thus the discriminatory power of the evaluation scheme will persist such that the assessment procedurewill still be able to rate the performance of the seats. The full text ofthis paper may be found at: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv21/09-0116.pdf For the covering abstract see ITRD E145407.
Samenvatting