The use of improvised explosive devices against moving vehicles has been on the rise recently. Their explosions induce devastating effects on vehicle occupants. Blast mitigation seats are used as a counter measure to reduce such harmful effects. This paper presents the scientific work for evaluating the efficacy of blast mitigation seats. The work involves designing and building a custom anthropometric test device (ATD) and a drop tower test facility that is used to simulate the drop of a vehicle from heights up to 10 m. The ATD was equipped with two accelerometers; at the neck and at the pelvis. For validation, a multibody dynamics model was developed to simulate the drop test and the results were compared with ones from experiments. An overall root mean square error of 1.28 g was achieved. The test facility was then used to measure the performance of a blast mitigation seat. The results showed that blast mitigation seats reduced peak accelerations on the pelvis and neck areas by 92% and 87% respectively and this translates into moving predicted injuries from fatal to moderate.
Recently, the development of automotive embedded networks with different communication protocols has drawn the attention of many researchers. Especially, the development of separate onboard add-on systems that communicate with the vehicle network for the aim of enhancing comfort, safety or performance. The current article presents a simplified method for the design of a mini Controller Area Network (CAN) that accomplishes a sample task. The simple network uses the commonly used standard CAN protocol although it’s easily reconfigurable to deal with the extended CAN protocol. The network functionality was chosen to be as simple as transferring data between three CAN nodes, each holding a signal containing a switch status. After stating the network system requirements, the network topology and components list were identified. The circuit design of each node as well as the network design are presented and simulated. The network is built and tested experimentally. The proposed design method enables the use of low cost components that are available in the market. The nodes control programs are reconfigurable to match the target research vehicle network configurations. The proposed design method provides a handy tool for researchers that require utilizing a CAN protocol communication circuit that gathers information from any vehicle platform.
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