Kinematic Analysis of the Tram-pedestrian Collision - a Preliminary Case Study.

Abstract

The goal of the study was to conduct a preliminary analysis of the kinematics of tram-pedestrian collision in case of a side impact. A T6A5-type tram, travelling at the speed of 10 km/h, was used for the analysis and reconstruction of the collision. The pedestrian response was analysed using a crash-test dummy. The postimpact dummy movement was approximated by the motion of its centre of mass (COM) and only the translation movement in the frontal plane of dummy (along the horizontal and vertical axes) was considered. The results showed a significant change of coefficient of restitution after the initial impact. At first, the coefficient of restitution was high (e = 0.94), suggesting an almost perfectly elastic collision, followed by a sharp decrease (e = 0.07) within a short period of time (t = 0.02 s) that suggested an almost perfectly inelastic collision. After that, the coefficient of restitution reached a plateau phase with the values ranging from 0.18 to 0.32 and corresponding to a percentage loss of kinetic energy falling within 89 % and 97 %. The preliminary analysis of this study highlighted some features of side-impact tram-pedestrian collision and its kinematics.

Assessment of Pedestrians’ Head and Lower Limb Injuries in Tram–Pedestrian Collisions

“…A real-life case with detailed crash information and medical damage reports that meets the requirements of crash reconstruction cannot be found, and because real-life crash tests are not morally and ethically permissible, this paper verifies the dynamics and kinematics behavior of the developed tram-pedestrian collision model through tramdummy impact tests. As shown in Figure 3, a Hybrid III 50th male pedestrian model provided by HNSAF was used to represent the pedestrian, which has been validated for use in tram-pedestrian crash tests [19,20]. Two real-world full-scale tram-dummy impact tests were conducted in 2023 at CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co., Ltd., Qingdao, China.…”

“…The study revealed that the pedestrian's size, the phase of the gait cycle, and the collision position significantly affected both the overall motion and the sustained injuries. In terms of real-world collision tests, Tomsovsky et al [19,20] validated the usability of the Hybrid III dummy for tram-pedestrian crash tests and analyzed the kinematics of tram-pedestrian collisions in the case of a side impact at a speed of 10 km/h. Fanta et al [21] carried out kinematic and HIC analysis of a pedestrian dummy collision with a KT8D5-type tram at speeds of 10 and 20 km/h.…”