Project

Pedestrian fatalities comprise a significant portion of total traffic fatalities. The head is the most fatally injured body region. Most of the pedestrian accidents occur in urban areas at low impact velocities and it can be anticipated that muscle tonus plays a significant role in the kinematics of the pedestrian when impacted, especially the head velocity at impact with the vehicle structure. For development and evaluation of pedestrian protection systems there are few tools available, but no tools available that can include muscle forces during the impact, in the development and evaluation of countermeasures for pedestrian injuries. This project will focus on improved kinematics of a state-of-art Human Body Model (HBM) with the purpose to model humanlike head-to-car contact conditions and on improved the head injury predictability. The emphasis will be on pre-crash activated muscle tonus and its effect on injuries due to contact between the pedestrian and the vehicle.