Virthuman Application: Is an Autonomous Vehicle with Non-standard Seating Safe in a Side Crash?

Highly Automated Vehicles (HAVs) will be more comfortable for their occupants than common cars from different aspects. For instance, their occupants can access extra spaces to adjust their seats as there will be no steering wheel and gearbox transmission handle in the interior. Among a wide range of seating configuration possibilities, the majority of passengers prefer to be in the Face-to-Face or the Living room configurations that are known as non-standard seating configurations. The present survey investigated how safe are these non-standard seating configurations in a side crash in comparison with the standard one in which all seats are facing the front windshield. Four identical 50th percentile Virthuman models were integrated into a schematic of automated vehicle's interior. Standard three-point seatbelts fastened bodies to up-right seats made from Polyurethane foam. A 30 km/h crash acceleration pulse was applied to the model for simulating side crash with a virtual sledge test in the Virtual Performance Solution (VPS) environment, PAMCRASH module. Results revealed that the Living room configuration was safer for the Rear Left occupant in comparison with the Standard one. Also, the Front Left occupant did not experience safer occasions in non-standard configurations from a Head & Neck injury point of view.