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Rollover crashes are a serious public health problem in United States, with one third of traffic fatalities occurring in crashes where rollover occurred. While it has been shown that occupant kinematics affect the injury risk in rollover crashes, no anthropomorphic test device (ATD) has yet demonstrated kinematic biofidelity in rollover crashes. Therefore, the primary goal of this study was to assess the kinematic response biofidelity of six ATDs (Hybrid III, Hybrid III Pedestrian, Hybrid III with Pedestrian Pelvis, WorldSID, Polar II and THOR) by comparing them to post mortem human surrogate (PMHS) kinematic response targets published concurrently; and the secondary goal was to evaluate and compare the kinematic response differences among these ATDs.

The goals of this study were to examine the dynamic force-deformation and kinematic response of a late model van subjected to an inverted drop test and to evaluate the accuracy of three-dimensional multi-point roof deformation measurements made by an optical system mounted inside the vehicle. The inverted drop test was performed using a dynamic rollover test system (Kerrigan et al., 2011 SAE) with an initial vehicle pitch of −5 degrees, a roll of +155 degrees and a vertical velocity of 2.7 m/s at initial contact. Measurements from the optical system, which was composed of two high speed imagers and a commercial optical processing software were compared to deformation measurements made by two sets of three string potentiometers. The optical and potentiometer measurements reported similar deformations: peak resultant deformations varied by 0.7 mm and 3 ms at the top of the A-pillar, and 1.7 mm and 2 ms at the top of the B-pillar.

The goal of this study is to present the methods employed and results obtained during the first six tests performed with a new dynamic rollover test system. The tests were performed to develop and refine test methodology and instrumentation methods, examine the potential for variation in test parameters, evaluate how accurately actual touchdown test parameters could be specified, and identify problems or limitations of the test fixture. Five vehicles ranging in size and inertia from a 2011 Toyota Yaris (1174 kg, 379 kg m₂) to a 2002 Ford Explorer (2408 kg, 800 kg m₂) were tested. Vehicle kinematic parameters at the instant of vehicle-to-road contact varied across the tests: roll rates of 211-268 deg/s, roll angles of 133-199 deg, pitch angles of -12 deg to 0 deg, vertical impact velocities of 1.7 to 2.7 m/s, and road velocities of 3.0-8.8 m/s.