Frontal Impact Protection: Application of an Upgraded Chest Injury Criterion the Equivalent Deflection (DEQ)
The equivalent deflexion (Deq) is a new criterion foreseen to be used in European New Car Assessment Programme (EuroNCAP) to better assess the chest protection in frontal impact. It has the particularity to discriminate the contribution of two parameters on chest deflexion: (1) contribution of the seat-belt (with a small surface of load application, which is damageable for the occupant); (2) contribution of the airbag (with a larger surface of load application, which is more acceptable for the occupant). Such a criterion will help car manufacturers to design adequate restraint systems with an appropriate combination of airbag and seat-belt to better protect the vulnerable occupants. To better understand this new criterion, PSA Peugeot Citroën launched a study to quantify the performances of its current vehicle platforms with respect to the Deq. Physical tests were analysed on different car platforms with several restraint systems characteristics. Each time, the Hybrid III rodpot and the shoulder belt load were recorded and analysed. This analysis shows that the sensitivity and reproducibility of the Deq measurements are equivalent than the Rodpot ones. Because the Deq criterion needs the chest deflexion measured on the Hybrid III rodpot and the shoulder belt load, there are some questions raised by other researchers about sensitivity of Deq and about the pertinence of Deq with respect to Rodpot. This question is investigated for a nominal restraint system as proposed in Peugeot and Citroën cars. This was done via Design of Experiments made with HIII 50th and HIII 5thmodels respectively in ODB 64 km/h and Full-width rigid test 50 km/h. The outcome is that for good restraint systems already built to be protective (load limitation less than 5kN), Deq would prevent to use combination of relative high load limitation with very soft airbags, contrary to Rodpot. But this study is just at its initial phase because of time constraints, because not all the biomechanical criteria were analysed (eg. neck load and moments) and because only one vehicle was investigated. Therefore, the authors would suggest carrying out the same analysis for restraint solutions widely different than the authors.
- Record URL:
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Corporate Authors:
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC United States 20590 -
Authors:
- Cerdan, Daniel
- Zeitouni, Richard
- Adalian, Céline
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Conference:
- 23rd International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV)
- Location: Seoul , Korea, South
- Date: 2013-5-27 to 2013-5-30
- Publication Date: 2013
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Web
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 12p
- Monograph Title: 23rd International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV): Research Collaboration to Benefit Safety of All Road Users
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Air bags; Dummies; Frontal crashes; Occupant protection devices; Restraint systems; Seat belts; Thorax; Vehicle safety
- Identifier Terms: European New Car Assessment Program
- Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment; I84: Personal Injuries; I91: Vehicle Design and Safety;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01571297
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 13-0437
- Files: TRIS, ATRI, USDOT
- Created Date: Jul 28 2015 3:56PM