| MINIMIZING PEDESTRIAN LOWER-LEG INJURY CONSIDERING RATE DEPENDENCE OF THE PLASTIC ENERGY ABSORBER |
| H. M. GIL1, Y. D. KWON2, D. H. KIM2, Y. S. KIM3 |
1Ret. SL Corporation
2Kyungpook National University
3SL Corporation |
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| ABSTRACT |
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Recently, the global demand for reducing pedestrian injuries that result from vehicle accidents has increased. The lower legs of pedestrians, in particular, are more frequently injured than other parts of the body in accidents because they make direct contact with the front bumper systems of vehicles. Thus, it is necessary to reduce injuries by improving the structure of the frontal bumper. EPP (expanded polypropylene) foam is commonly used to absorb energy in a bumper system, but the foam is not sufficient to absorb the impact in the limited inner bumper space. Thus, a crumple bumper structure made from engineering plastics could be more effective in reducing the level of injury. The dynamic material properties for engineering plastics are required in pedestrian-to-vehicle collision analysis to determine the design shape for this structure. In general, it is very difficult to extract these properties. In this study, an indirect method to extract the dynamic material properties for the engineering plastics is applied: a correlation method between the falling-dart impact test and finite element analysis. Finally, an optimized plastic energy absorber is proposed to improve pedestrian safety performance by conducting a parameter study for its design values. |
| Key Words:
Pedestrian safety, Lower legform, Energy absorber, GTR, Euro-NCAP |
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