Finite Element Modelling of Biomechanical Dummies- The Ultimate Tool in Anti-Whiplash Safety Design?

Nowadays, people purchasing a new car are no longer simply looking for attractive styling, good performance and an efficient, reliable engine; one of their main concerns is now also the safety of the car. During the last decade, significant progress in improving car occupant safety has been made through the use of safety devices, such as airbags and advanced seat belts, as well as the construction of the car body itself. However, much still needs to be done to satisfy increasingly stringent legislation and public demand. This work deals with the problem of whiplash injuries that traditionally, due to difficulties in diagnosis, have been very difficult to investigate let alone prevent. Nevertheless, some progress has recently been made in this field. We have previously presented a simplified dynamic FE model of the cervical spine which, using comparisons with the latest experimental work on fresh cadavers, allowed the mechanism of injury to be defined. Subsequently the spine model was used in conjunction with a simple occupant model to investigate the possibility of creating a design tool for anti-whiplash devices. This work, although only preliminary, indicated that the approach of grafting a fully biomechanical FE model of the cervical spine onto a conventional FE model of a crash test dummy could produce an unrivalled analysis of a whiplash injury situation. In the present work a new, more advanced biomechanical FE model of the head–neck complex has been created and combined with the Hybrid III FE dummy model, which is the industry standard tool for occupant safety. The principal modifications are the method of modelling soft tissues and the representation of the inertial properties of the head to achieve a more realistic behaviour of the model.