On the relationship between kinematic variables and structural failure in a viscoelastic medium under impact.

Current procedures employed to develop injury indices for use in automotive safety research are limited, by necessity, to obtaining a series of observations on experimental subjects of resulting injuries which are a result of forces or velocities imposed on body segments. This technical note reports, in a qualitative fashion, on a preliminary attempt to utilize DYNA3D, a finite element computer code, to compute the stress and strain fields of a thorax- like structure subject to impact.