Thoracic Trauma Assessment Formulations for Restrained Drivers in Simulated Frontal Impacts

Quantification of age-related shape change of the human rib cage through geometric morphometrics

“…Thoracic injuries are present in the vast majority of blunt trauma patients (Hoff et al, 1994). With respect to MVC, injury tolerance of the thorax diminishes with increasing age of the vehicle occupant (Alem et al, 1978;Morgan et al, 1994;Thomas et al, 1979). A study of belted occupants in frontal MVC found that chest injuries are disproportionately common in fatal and seriously injured drivers over age 40 (Morris et al, , 2003.…”

Chest deflection tolerance to blunt anterior loading is sensitive to age but not load distribution

“…The posterior displacement of the sternum relative to the spine is an established indicator of thoracic injury risk [4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. This displacement, commonly referred to as chest deflection, is measured by contemporary frontal impact ATDs and a chest deflection limit is specified in U.S. federal motor vehicle safety standard (FMVSS) 208.…”

Finite element comparison of human and Hybrid III responses in a frontal impact

“…However, previous research has reported that the threshold corresponding to 50% risk of an AIS3+ thoracic injury is higher for blunt loading compared to belt loading for certain thoracic injury criteria (Mertz et al, 1991;Morgan et al, 1994). In addition, it has been shown that fracture patterns can vary considerably with respect to different safety restraint conditions such as belt only, airbag only, and combined belt and airbag loading (Kalleris et al, 1998;Kent et al, 2001).…”

“…These tools rely on biomechanically based thoracic criteria to assess thoracic injury risk in automotive collisions and evaluate the effectiveness of new and existing safety restraint systems. The literature regarding thoracic loading in full scale post mortem human surrogate (PMHS) testing has focused predominately on the understanding of thoracic injury mechanisms and the development of global criteria that can be used to assess thoracic injury risk using ATDs (Eppinger, 1976;Kuppa and Eppinger, 1998;Laituri et al, 2003Laituri et al, , 2005Mertz et al, 1991Mertz et al, , 1997Morgan et al, 1986Morgan et al, , 1994Pintar et al, 1997;Viano and Lau, 1986;Viano, 1989). These studies have yielded a number of different thoracic injury criteria including: belt tension, peak sternum deflection, maximum chest deflection, rate of chest compression, chest acceleration, as well as various combinations of these parameters.…”