Analysis of pedestrian collision with a pickup truck

by Narkhede, Sachin Narayan.

During the last two decades, changes in vehicle design and increase in the number of the light truck vehicles (LTVs) and vans have led to changes in pedestrian injury profile. Due to the dynamic nature of the pedestrian crashes, biomechanical aspects of collisions can be better evaluated in field studies. Thousands of pedestrians are killed or injured in road traffic accidents. The need to provide and improve pedestrian crash survival research programs in pedestrian collision environment is the subject of much interest and research. At present, the European Enhanced Vehicle-safety Committee (EEVC) test procedure for impacts of various pedestrian subsystems, which represent sections of the human body, provides a means of assessing and rating the impact sites on a vehicle. Development and evaluation of test procedures, such as “full-body analysis” with the aid of computer simulation for optimizing vehicles on computer for compliance with the testing and evaluation methods proposed by the EEVC, which assess the injury propensity of vehicle structures for pedestrians is needed. The TNO Road Vehicle Research Institute has adopted a fully integrated approach of “full-body analysis,” which offers a significant advantage over the EEVC method that the entire body of the pedestrian can be considered, including interactions between the individual parts of the body. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct a pedestrian-vehicle accident case by dummy model simulation to provide a way to study the kinematics and potential injuries of pedestrian in any specific impact situation. Study provides flexibility to manipulate model parameters to capture impact responses of the pedestrian. The simulations are carried out at three different dummy positions: side, front and rear. Impact speed, vehicle front shapes, stiffness of vehicle parts and pedestrian height are the key factors, which influence the pedestrian kinematics and injury severity in a pedestrian-vehicle impact. It is most important to evaluate head injury risks v as it causes a serious threat to life. Pedestrian-vehicle crash simulations are studied at different impact speeds to replicate accidents involving adult and child pedestrians. These studies are done for the light pickup truck. The overall pedestrian behavior, head impact events to predict possible head impact location and injuries sustained by head, chest and pelvis are determined. There is a correlation between the pedestrian height and the head impact location. The 6-year old child is more liable to chest injury in impacts with truck. The potential injury to chest and pelvis is more for the child pedestrians in accidents. In general, the injuries sustained by head, chest and pelvis are severe for the high speed crashes since the resultant body velocities are high during post impact kinematics. The research also postulates a method for development of pedestrian compliant vehicle structure to minimize the potential injury risk. vi