Protection of occupants in car side impact crashes with an external inflatable upper torso restraint system

Abstract

Passenger vehicles in today’s world are more crashworthy than they used to be. Significant improvements have been done in the recent years to improve protection for occupants in the passenger vehicle; most of it was done in frontal crashes and only a small amount of improvement has been observed in side impact crashes. Thus, making it necessary, to do significant research on side impact crashes. Side impact standard FMVSS 214 was established to be used as a base for studying injury parameters during side impacts. But, this standard does not take into account the severities of Neck injury. Neck injuries, used to associate with front and rear side crashes can be life altering. Neck injuries are even given lowest ratings on the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) 1. Recent studies show the importance of neck injury during side impacts, leading to need for immediate need to study the effect of neck injuries on occupants in passenger vehicles. In this study, to address the above concern effort has been made to improve neck injury protection during side impacts, using FMVSS 214 standard as the basis to study the effect of airbag on restraint system in improving occupant protection from neck injuries. Two different dummy models US-DoT SID (according to FMVSS 214 standard) and Hybrid III 50% dummy have been used for the study, and the results show improvement in Neck Injury Criterion (NIC) commonly used to assess neck injuries along with improvement in Head injury criterion (HIC) commonly used to evaluate head injuries with the use of airbag on restraint system.