Skip to main content
European Commission logo print header

Future Occupant Safety for Crashes in Cars

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - OSCCAR (Future Occupant Safety for Crashes in Cars)

Periodo di rendicontazione: 2019-12-01 al 2021-11-30

The future highly automated vehicle, with comfort and convenience enhancing features, such as relaxed seating positions and rotated seats, will require the development of more advanced and novel restraint systems. By partnering with vehicle manufacturers, technical universities, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the research project OSCCAR (Future Occupant Safety for Crashes in Cars), the use of a comprehensive integrated approach for the development of future advanced occupant protection systems can be guaranteed. Guiding principles and concepts for occupant protection will be developed and assessed by using harmonized human body models (HBM) for complex test cases and with consideration of heterogeneity characteristics like gender, age, and other demographic factors, allowing for a dedicated and individual increase in safety for the occupant population.
The EU Horizon 2020 Programme funded research project “OSCCAR” unites 21 international partners, who collectively investigate on a novel simulation-based approach to safeguard occupants in traffic accidents. Virtual human body models will support the traditionally used crash test dummies with the assessment and homologation of future vehicles using computer simulation.
OSCCAR project generated output in all relevant projected areas of future occupant safety in the Horizon 2020 MG 3.2-2017 topic “Protection of all road users in crashes”. These areas specifically future traffic accident & conflict incidences considering mixed traffic, improved occupant safety in future automated vehicle enabled interior designs, new occupant sitting positions and advances in related occupant assessment capability, strongly building on virtual testing using human body model (HBM) technologies.
OSCCAR project managed to investigate in 6 different protection principle studies, methods of advanced, future occupant protection, in future relevant crash configurations and interiors using beyond state of the diverse active human model (AHM) and active human body model (AHBM) occupant models. These contain a diverse representation of occupant sizes, from small Asian female to obese, in automated vehicles (AV) enabled interiors characterized by rotated, reclined, and living room seats, looking at critical and future relevant crash configurations like crossing scenarios (straight crossing path and left turn across path, opposite direction, far side), also including pre-crash actions.
OSCCAR was able to provide significant insight into future remaining crashes in automated driving (AD) vehicles in mixed traffic, as well as a related update to openPass open-source software.
OSCCAR was able to demonstrate continuous occupant assessment methodology for pre- and in-crash phases for a set of different occupant models in 3 different solvers and finite element (FE) and multibody simulation technology (Madymo, VPS and LS-Dyna) serving as a selective example for a virtual testing-based homologation test case.
In this context OSCCAR was able to provide a method and procedures for virtual testing relevant for occupant safety assessment with HBMs.
On the improvement of HBM side, OSCCAR was, amongst others, able to provide an openly available catalogue of volunteer test data incl. relevant simulation environment for the pre-crash kinematics, advanced muscle models , kinematic controllers and muscle control systems for HBMs, skin and tissues models for HBMs in order to provide relevant improved lap belt interaction. In addition to that, work on injury criteria for head and neck was done, as well as alignment on rib fracture assessment methodology was achieved.
OSCCAR was able to produce 20+ state of the art enhancing public deliverables, all to be found on http://www.osccarproject.eu/media/deliverables
OSCCAR was able to provide a large set of open access available data and models for post OSCCAR use, all links to be found on OSCCAR webpage: https://www.osccarproject.eu/media/results/
OOSCCAR project has managed to be internationally recognized and known for important research on the highly relevant future vehicle occupant safety topics, mainly through the dissemination efforts by OSCCAR partners.
From a long-term perspective OSCCAR will definitely contribute to the reduction of the number of road fatalities, the severity of injuries and the number of inured persons. Parts of a public future accident & conflict scenario database, in particular for use of OEMs, Tier suppliers, road operators/ infrastructure providers and even legislation authorities is already in use from other projects as well as in publications.
The efforts taken to establish a basis for standardisation of virtual assessment of advanced protection systems for conventional vehicles and highly automated vehicles (HAVS) could form a basis for the Virtual Testing Crashworthiness Group (VTC) and for the Human Body Models for Virtual Testing Group (HBM4VT).
Looking back after more than three years of OSCCAR, the consortium is proud to report a very high number of dissemination activities (54) and of high-quality scientific publications (30), dissemination and information events, and many excellent technical achievements, which will be introduced to the market via dedicated exploitation activities, generating the expected economic impact.
All material results and outcomes will be available on OSCCAR website for use also after project end as soon as they are provided by all partners. By providing open access, OSCCAR will also contribute to the progress of science in this field of research. The communication and dissemination of knowledge to the international transport community and the several clustering activities and involvement of standardisation groups has made the project visible to the international research community in this field & regulatory and consumer test organizations in the US and Asia. The joint research on highly safety relevant topics definitely raised awareness for future vehicle safety.
By dissemination efforts of all partners, OSCCAR project is internationally known for relevant research on highly relevant future vehicle occupant safety topics. This was made possible and supported by internal workshops, regular work meetings and video conferences and intensive joint work at task level, scientific publications, conferences, and speeches. All achievements of OSCCAR project are comprehensively documented in the OSCCAR deliverables. As soon as approved by EC they will be available on the OSCCAR website (20 out of 31). Besides the deliverables that are already public, the consortium decided unanimously to also make two more deliverables publicly available: D2.4 Final virtual design of advanced passenger protection principles and D2.5 Validation and demonstration of advanced passenger protection principles . During the final event, that took place online, the main achievements, results, and success stories of OSCCAR project were presented. They are also available on the project website.