Industry Insights Into Kinematics and Injury Risk for Far-Side Occupants During Electric Vehicle Side Pole Impact Accidents

Abstract

With the rapid growth in the number of electric vehicles equipped with advanced consumer electronics, the rate of impact accidents has also been rising year by year. Side pole impact tests are an important method for evaluating the collision safety of these modern electric vehicles. The purpose of this study is to gain industry insights into the kinematics and injury risk for far-side occupants in electric vehicle side pole impacts. This study uses a full-scale finite element model of an electric vehicle and a human body finite element model to conduct an in-depth analysis of the occupant’s kinematic response and the risk of injury to the head, neck, chest, and internal organs under various conditions by changing the relative position and impact angle between the rigid pole and the vehicle. The results show that the seatbelt fails to effectively restrict the upper body movement of the occupants, leading to the occupants slipping out of the seatbelt; the position of the impact significantly affects the injury risk to the occupants, with the highest probability of injury occurring during an A pillar impact and a lowest probability during a C pillar impact. In 28%–40% of the cases, the risk of far-side occupants sustaining serious head and brain abbreviated injury scale AIS 3+ injuries exceeds 40%, and in 22% of the cases, the probability of occupants sustaining diffuse axonal injuries based on which metric is higher than 40%; there is no correlation between the head injury criterion HIC15 and the impact angle, but a weak correlation exists between HIC15 and maximum principal strain (MPS); a strong positive correlation is found between the impact angle and brain injury criterion BrIC/MPS. The predicted MPS of nearly 40% and 80% of the far-side occupants’ anterior longitudinal ligament and posterior longitudinal ligament exceeds the injury threshold, respectively, while in all cases, the predicted MPS of the occupants’ capsular ligament and interspinous ligament exceeds the injury threshold, which indicates an extremely high risk of ligament injury. The peak strains of the internal organs of all far-side occupants exceed the threshold, indicating that the occurrence of these internal organ injuries mainly stems from a viscous mechanism, and the peak strains have a strong positive correlation with the impact angle.