Impact Abdominal Injury Analysis Using a 6-Year-Old Pediatric Occupant Abdomen Finite Element Model

Abstract

The understanding of pediatric abdominal injury mechanism using finite element (FE) human body models is of great importance to improve the design of vehicle safety. The whole thorax and abdomen finite element (FE) model of a 6-year-old occupant was integrated based on the individual thorax and abdomen FE models. Some soft tissue FE models such as certain muscles, fat and skin were also developed in the whole FE model. The model was validated by reconstructing impact experiments of paediatric cadaver abdomen experiments. The simulation results showed that the abdominal impact force-displacement curve and viscous criterion (VC) at three impact speed located in the cadaver experiment corridor, which means the validation of the model. The maximum force and the VCmax raised significantly with the increase of impact speed. The simulation results also showed that the strains of large intestine at the three impact speed exceeded its failure strain while the strains of solid organs such as liver is lower than the failure strain. The FE model can be used to study the mechanism of child occupant abdominal injury in traffic accidents.