Repeatability of injury value in full-wrap frontal collision tests

Abstract

Approximately a third of fatalities in traffic accidents in Japan are vehicle occupants and 53% of vehicle accidents in Japan are frontal collisions. The Technical Standard for Occupant Protection in Frontal Collision, adopted by Japan in 1994, defines evaluation criteria as the Head Injury Criterion (HIC), chest acceleration and femur force during a full-wrap frontal collision test conducted at 50 km/h with Hybrid III AM50 dummies mounted on the driver’s and front passenger seats. We investigated the repeatability of measurements made in this full-wrap frontal collision test using four vehicles. We found that the ratios of differences of the measured values to each injury acceptable reference value were an average of 5%, 2% and 3% for the HIC, Chest 3 msecG and femur force, respectively.