Abstract
Injury mechanisms need to be investigated for pregnant women, who form a vulnerable and sensitive occupant group in road traffic accidents. Most experimental and computational studies utilise assumed and simplified acceleration pulses as inputs for the accident recreation in laboratory crash tests. In this paper, the real-life accident loading histories with accurate representations of the crash pulses are investigated via ‘Expecting’. ‘Expecting’ is a computational pregnant occupant model developed at Loughborough University, UK, in order to investigate the dynamic response of the pregnant women and the fetus within the finite element uterus. Various real-life acceleration histories are utilised as inputs to the model in order to investigate full-frontal impacts. The global and local kinematics of the pregnant occupant is presented as well as strains in uterus to demonstrate injury levels in crashes. Implications of using the real-life crash pulses versus simplified assumed crash pulses are discussed.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Proceedings of ICRASH2012 – International Crashworthiness Conference, Milano, Italy |
Number of pages | 11 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 978-1-907153-02-0 |
Publication status | Published - 2012 |
Keywords
- frontal impact
- crash pulse
- computational model
- pregnant occupant
- Expecting
- strain in uterus