Improved side impact protection: The development of injury assessment functions 2001-06-0140

The objective of the ISIP Project has been to develop a methodology to allow vehicle designers to optimize safety systems of vehicles in side impacts. This optimization was based on the minimization of the cost of injury or Harm.

To form the link between the safety system protective capability in a crash and the cost of injury to the occupant required the development of a series of lateral impact Injury Assessment Functions (IAFs). These IAFs had to be able to predict the risk of injury, in AIS, for each of the major body regions of the occupant. The injury predictions were used to derive Harm for the crash and were based on the responses of a human surrogate, the BioSID.

This paper describes the development of these lateral injury IAFs from the analysis of cadaver test data.