Numerical Study on Neck Injury Under Different Postures in Vehicle Side Impact

Neck injury is a severe problem in traffic accidents. While most studies are focused on the neck injury in rear and front impacts, few are conducted in side impact. This study focuses on the difference of neck injury under different postures and the difference of 7 cervical vertebras under the same posture using the method of prescribed structure motion(PSM). The analytical results show that the maximum changes of mean force and mean moment of 7 cervical vertebras under 8 different postures are 20% and 47% respectively. The variation of each cervical vertebra is different under different neck postures. Up cervical vertebras (C1-C4) and low cervical vertebras (C5-C7) suffer different forces and moments under the same neck posture. Generally speaking, No.6 (neck right leaning 40°) is the posture with lowest neck injury risk.