Biomechanics | Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Gdańsk University of Technology

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Biomechanics

Our portfolio with some general information about analyses that were carried out.

Head injury criteria - frontal vehicle crash

The aim was to compare the head injury criterion (HIC) for two airbag models.

Two airbag models were prepared and validated against a pendulum test. Those airbag models were applied to a steering wheel of a Ford F250 vehicle numerical model. Two simulations of frontal vehicle crash with a rigidwall were conducted and HIC curves were compared for both cases.

Exemplary results are presented below.

Vid. 1 Overview of the vehicle impact with an additional view on the occupant 

Vid. 2 Overview of the vehicle impact with an additional view on the occupant 

Lumbar spine injury

The aim was to analyze a mechanism of lumbar spine injury during a car crash with a concrete road safety barrier.

In our work we used an approach that consisted of two models: a global model and a local model. The global model was a simulation of the full-scale vehicle crash under TB32 impact conditions (EN1317). In that model all of sub-models were previously validated in other research. The specific boundary conditions were extracted from the global model and properly applied to the local model. The local model had a detailed representation of a lumbar spine section that was extracted from THUMS v6.1 (Toyota Motor Corp.). The detailed lumbar spine was enhanced compared to initial THUMS and validated against 15 validation tests specified in literature. Finally, injury predictors were used to evaluate the risk of fracture.

Exemplary results are presented below.

Vid. 1 Overview of the vehicle impact with an additional view on the occupant 

 Vid. 2 Overview of the simulation of the detailed lumbar spine model