Analysis of Pedestrian Head Kinematics During Impact to Car Process Using a Full Deformable Pedestrian Model

Pedestrian head safety test is one of requirements in the safety inspection of new models of car. Therefore, pedestrian head protection is considered for all new model of car in process of research and development. There are two solutions to analyze the protection of car for pedestrian head in collisions that are using full pedestrian model or pedestrian headform impactor. Previous research has analyzed and shown that the two solutions give different evaluation results, but there is no analysis of the cause of the difference or indicating which method is more reliable. Pedestrian head injuries were assessed by the HIC value which is determined through the resultant acceleration of the pedestrian head center of gravity during collisions. Thus, the kinematic characteristics of the pedestrian head will affect the HIC value or the results of assessing the pedestrian safety. This study will analyze the pedestrian head kinematics during impacting process using a full deformable pedestrian model. The obtained results will be compared with the kinematic characteristics of the head impactor to find out the cause of the difference in the evaluation results. This research is very useful to develop the more reliable method of pedestrian head safety tests.