Project

Statistics from USA show that the number of occupants killed in passenger cars per traveled kilometer show a positive trend and decreased steadily during the period 1975 to 2007. The same statistics for heavy vehicles showed that the number of killed occupants per traveled kilometer also decreased steadily from 1975 to early 1990’s where the trend seems to stagnate and has not changed very much up to this day. In heavy commercial vehicles, low safety belt usage among drivers have been reported which is believed to increase the risk of steering wheel rim to chest contact in frontal collisions. The crash test dummy used in heavy commercial vehicle safety today is the Hybrid III dummy. This dummy is the only dummy used in legislative and consumer rating tests for passenger cars in frontal crash tests. As the dummy was developed for use in passenger cars the suitability for use in heavy commercial vehicles was questioned. The objective is to investigate the suitability of the Hybrid III dummy and its standard instrumentation in assessing chest injury risk in steering wheel rim to chest loading at different heights for drivers in heavy vehicles. The injury criteria reference values are evaluated and if applicable, modified to better predict injury risk in this load case. To assist in this evaluation a finite element model of the human was used as a reference.