| Despite the continuous improvement of vehicle and child restraint devices, the statistics are showing that the road accidents are the main cause for death and children injuries. Furthermore, the effectiveness of child restraint systems was very well proven in the case of front-end collision but the performance of the protective devices in side-impact situation were not, as yet, clearly demonstrated. Reliable and realistic procedures are necessary to assess the effectiveness of child restraint system in various impact configurations and in this context the numerical modelling is a relatively inexpensive and efficient tool that could be used to evaluate the performances of child restraint systems.; This project was aimed at the development of a numerical method to simulate the behaviour of a child passenger restrained in a protective device in the case of a vehicle side impact. Child restraint system and vehicle body model have been built using finite element and multi-body techniques. The model had been validated for side and front-end impact configurations and we have used it to study various installation configurations, different child dummies' responses and the influence of the intrusion against the child dummy behaviour in the case of side impact. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
