Title: Studying the effect of vehicle front-end design variables on different head injury forms

Authors: He Wu; Yong Han; Di Pan; Bingyu Wang; Hongwu Huang

Addresses: Pen-Tung Sah Institute of Micro-Nano Science and Technology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, China ' School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Xiamen University of Technology, Xiamen, Fujian, China ' School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Xiamen University of Technology, Xiamen, Fujian, China ' School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Xiamen University of Technology, Xiamen, Fujian, China ' Pen-Tung Sah Institute of Micro-Nano Science and Technology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, China

Abstract: The correlation between vehicle front profiles and multiple head injury forms in accidents remains unclear. Three hundred simulations were conducted by considering five vehicle front-end variables: bumper centre height, Bonnet Length (BL), Bonnet Leading Edge Height (BLEH), Bonnet Angle (BA) and Windscreen Angle (WA). HIC15, angular acceleration, maximum principal strain and cumulative strain damage measure were calculated to evaluate Skull Fracture (SF), Sub-Dural Hematoma (SDH) and Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI). Prediction models were developed and evaluated by using back-propagation neural network algorithms. Results reveal that BLEH exhibits the highest overall significance of 0.41, which was the most sensitive parameter affecting all three injury forms. SF was significantly correlated with BL, with an importance value of 0.12. Changing WA and BA demonstrates significant effects on SDH and DAI, with significance values of 0.29 and 0.33, respectively. The results can give a comprehensive reference for the design and optimisation of vehicle front profiles.

Keywords: head injury forms; vehicle-to-pedestrian collision; vehicle front-end design variable; head injury prediction model.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVS.2023.137699

International Journal of Vehicle Safety, 2023 Vol.13 No.1, pp.46 - 63

Received: 05 Apr 2023
Accepted: 30 Nov 2023
Published online: 02 Apr 2024 *

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