Impact injury prediction by FE human body model

Abstract

The biomechanical simulations as powerful instruments are used in many areas such as traffic, medicine, sport, army etc. The simulations are often performed with models, which are based on the Finite Element Method. The great ability of FE deformable models of human bodies is to predict the injuries during accidents. Due to its modular implementation of thorax and abdomen FE models, human articulated rigid body model ROBBY, which was previously developed at the University of West Bohemia in cooperation with ESI Group (Engineering Simulation for Industry), can be used for this purpose. ROBBY model representing average adult man is still being improved to obtain more precise model of human body with the possibility to predict injuries during accidents. Recently, new generated thoracic model was embedded into ROBBY model and this was subsequently satisfactorily validated. In this study the updated ROBBY model was used and injury of head and thorax were investigated during frontal crashes simulated by virtue of two types of sled tests with various types of restraint system (shoulder belt, lap belt and airbag). The results of the simulation were compared with the experimental ones.