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Advancing traffic safety through the investigation of human tolerance to impact

Objective

"Motor vehicle crashes are responsible for more than 1.2 million deaths a year and predictions for 2020 place them as the third leading contributor to the global burden of disease and injury (WHO, 2004). Restraint systems have reduced the number of fatalities and injured occupants over the last decades and great expectations are placed on the contribution to safety of active systems. And yet, achieving the optimum protection for all kind of car passengers (women, pediatric, elderly) still remains a challenge.
Restraint systems are designed based on the results from simulated crashes using either physical models (crash test dummies) or computer models. The quality of the results from these simulations relies on the ability of the models to behave like a real human occupant, i.e. on the biofidelity of the models. The closer model to a human living is a cadaver or a Post-Mortem-Human-Subject (PMHS). PMHS tests constitute the best assessment of new restraint systems and the major source of data to improve the biofidelity of the aforementioned models.
The BIO-ADVANCE proposal aims to develop and establish the procedures to start the first research program involving PMHS testing in Spain. After four years of experience managing and directly performing several series of frontal and oblique simulated PMHS impacts, the researcher will carry out the required adaptation of the crash facility of the University of Zaragoza (host institution) to the particularities of PMHS testing. This proposal brings also into play the collaboration with the European Center for Injury Prevention to procure the donated bodies and to investigate injury causation and tolerances to impact.
The structural goal of BIO-ADVANCE is to capacitate the University of Zaragoza so that PMHS tests can be performed in its current crash test facility. The research goal is to investigate on the kinematics of the human spine in frontal and oblique impacts performing six fully instrumented PMHS sled tests."

Call for proposal

FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IIF
See other projects for this call

Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD DE ZARAGOZA
EU contribution
€ 168 896,40
Address
CALLE PEDRO CERBUNA 12
50009 Zaragoza
Spain

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Region
Noreste Aragón Zaragoza
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Administrative Contact
Oscar López (Mr.)
Links
Total cost
No data