A Study on Chest Soft Tissue Injury Risk in Vehicle to Pedestrian Collisions

Abstract

Pedestrians are at high risk of injuries in traffic accident due to lack of protective equipment. Chest injuries are one of the primary injuries that can cause lifelong disability and death in pedestrian accidents. In order to investigate chest biomechanics response under different frontal structures of vehicles in real world vehicle to pedestrian accidents, the THUMS 4.01 human body FE model and two vehicle FE models with different frontal structures (medium car, one-box vehicle) were developed with the finite element method. The deformation of heart, lung and other soft tissue were analyzed under impact velocity of 40 km/h. The results showed that the different frontal structures of vehicle cased different chest soft tissues injures. This study can provide a reference to assess chest soft tissue injury in vehicle-pedestrian collisions.