Development of an occupant restraint system model and parametric study on equivalent crash pulse in vehicle frontal offset crash

Studies were conducted to evaluate driver injury metrics with varying crash pulse in offset crash. First, a vehicle finite element (FE) model and an occupant restraint system (ORS) model were developed and validated against tests; then, the crash pulse collected from the test vehicle was equivalent to a dual-trapezoid shape pulse which will be quantitatively described by six parameters and was put into the ORS model; finally, parametric studies were conducted to analyze the sensitivities of parameters of equivalent crash pulse on head resultant acceleration, head injury criteria (HIC), neck axial force and chest deformation. Results showed that the second peak value of the crash pulse was statistically significant on all these injury criteria (P=0.001, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000 respectively), the first peak level had a negative significantly effect on all the criteria aforementioned except the chest deformation (P=0.011, 0.038, and 0.033 respectively), and the interaction of the time-points of first and second peak values had a significant influence on head resultant acceleration (P=0.03). A higher first peak value and a lower second peak value of the crash pulse could bring deeply lower injury metrics.