There is a high risk of the lower extremities being injured in frontal crashes of passenger cars. Head and chest are well protected nowadays due to safety features like airbags, seat belts and absorbing materials in the interior, while only limited safety improvements have been achieved in the leg area. In order to investigate the injury mechanism of lower legs, to define development targets and for the assessment of safety devices, Passive Ruckhaltesysteme developed a tool to reproduce the measured dynamic crash intrusion of the foot well in static and in sled tests. This foot well intrusion system (patent pending) allows the adjustment of both movements of the firewall, parallel intrusion and rotation effects, nearly independent and in a wide range. In this paper the functioning principle of this device is presented. A comparison between real crash tests and experimental simulations with sled tests is reviewed.
Samenvatting