Older occupants are at greater risk of serious/fatal injury than younger. These injuries (especially to the thorax) often occur at moderate collision severities, e.g. 30-40 km/h frontal impacts. This demonstrates that improvements to vehicle crash structures and restraint systems, which have delivered large benefits for younger occupants, have been less effective for older occupants.
Previous PMHS data is mainly high-severity tests with concentrated belt force, more like cars from 20 years ago. SENIORS developed a ‘generic sled rig’ to load PMHS, ATD and HBM the way modern cars do, with moderate belt forces and airbags. The designs for all aspects of the rig are publically available, including CAD and FE models.
Several new restraint system concepts were tested in frontal impacts and gave very large reductions in injury risk for older occupants. New test and assessment procedures were developed to encourage implementation of these restraints. Implemented in all new EU cars from 2020, these novel belts could save 800-1,200 lives and 6,500-10,500 serious injuries over ten years, or 4.7-8.1 billion Euros.
SENIORS extended ERU head impact test zones to include a greater proportion of cyclist head impact locations and adjusted the impact conditions to represent both pedestrians and cyclists. The effect of ADAS sensors mounted to the windscreen can also be assessed.
ERU thorax injuries were addressed by the TIPT which would benefit ERU impacted by the bonnet of a vehicle, and give a more informative and biofidelic way of testing the risk of vehicles with high bonnet leading edges, such as large SUVs and pickups, but also for new classes of vehicle for which aerodynamics is not a priority, such as last-mile shuttles. Further research is required to specify the most appropriate tool.
The FlexPLI-UBM shows important advantages over the standard FlexPLI used in UN regulations and Euro NCAP by:
- Improved kinematics of impact allowing more biofidelic assessment of knee and tibia injury risk, and the assessment of femur injury risk in the same tool.
- Enabling more appropriate testing near the end of the bumper beam, where modern cars often have an angled profile and by eliminating unrealistic rotation of the standard tool.
- Vehicles with very high front-end geometries can be tested and assessed.
