Search Results

Research into pedestrian protection has been carried out since the 1960s, in recent years there have been proposals in Europe to legislate requirements in this area and therefore the research is becoming more focused. In the draft regulation, impactor tests have been proposed as a method for evaluating the impact caused by vehicles'' body for pedestrians. This paper introduces impactor model and actual vehicle analysis as a means for simulating impactor testing. Three types of impactors for vehicle tests are presented. It is necessary that the models are first matched with the results of the calibration tests, then matched with the results of the tests on actual vehicles.

New vehicle body structure was developed that reduce pedestrian head injury in traffic accidents. The structure was developed to be incorporated into mass production models. This report show the concrete examples and performance of the structure. At first this paper describe application area of vehicle and injury criteria. During development, it is nessesary to fine control of load characteristic especially at the place that cannot make long stroke. The difference of each structures arrived to some kinds of pattern of energy absorb structure. Next problem was to satisfy another basic performance of the body structure, for example panel stiffness, noise vibration. Generally, automotive engineers focus their efforts on increasing body strength in order to improve body performance. The new structures were developed to satisfy the target for energy absorption characteristics, and also provide a sufficient level of body strength.

Honda has been studying ways of improving vehicle design to reduce the severity of pedestrian injury. Full-scale test using a pedestrian dummy is an important way to assess the aggressiveness of a vehicle to pedestrians. However, from test results it is concluded that current pedestrian dummies have stiffer characteristics than Post Mortem Human Subjects (PMHS). Also, the dummy kinematics during a collision is different from that of a human body. Because of the limitations of current dummies, it was decided to develop a new pedestrian dummy. At the first stage of the project, a computer simulation model that represented the PMHS tests was developed. Joint characteristics obtained from the simulation model were used in building a new pedestrian dummy which has been named Polar I. The advanced frontal crash test dummy, known as Thor, was selected as the base dummy. Modifications were made for the thorax, spine, knee etc.