A stochastic analysis on the effects of restraint component charatersitics on injury numbers at frontal crash tests

초록

In general, crash test data have a comparatively large variation because of the complexity of the tests. However, only limited numbers of crash tests are usually conducted to assess the safety performance of a vehicle due to monetary and time limitation. Thus, it is necessary to control factors which cause the variation in the test data to have consistent crash test results and to correctly assess the safety performance of a vehicle under development. In this study, a MADYMO (MAthematical DYnamic MOdeling; an engineering software toot developed by TNO that allows users to design and optimize occupant safety systems) model was validated deterministically to result in similar head, chest, pelvis deceleration pulses and belt load pulses to those from tests, and it was also validated stochastically to result in similar mean and standard deviation values of HIC15 and 3 msec clip. By reducing the standard deviation of major factors which might cause the variation in the injury numbers, the reduced standard deviation of the injury numbers could be determined by conducting a stochastic analysis using the validated MADYMO model. The sensitivity of the standard deviation of the injury numbers to that of the major factors was calculated in order to determine the major factors which may cause the variation of the injury numbers the most. The sensitivity of the injury numbers implies that the variation in the air bag permeability and the critical load of the loadlimiter should be well controlled in order to reduce the variation in HIC15 and 3 msec clip, respectively.