Re-evaluating the neck injury index (NII) using experimental PMHS tests

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Bass, C. R.¹; Salzar, R. S.²; Lucas, S. R.³; Rafaels, K. A.²; Damon, A. M.²; Crandall, J. R.²

Re-evaluating the neck injury index (NII) using experimental PMHS tests

Traffic Inj Prev. 2010;11(2):194-201

Affiliations

¹Duke University, Biomedical Engineering Department, Durham, North Carolina

²The University of Virginia, Center for Applied Biomechanics, Charlottesville, Virginia

³Exponent, Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Abstract and keywords

Objective: The neck injury index, NII, developed in ISO 13232 (2005) as a testing and evaluation procedure for assessing the risk of injury to the AO/C1/C2 region of the cervical spine in motorcycle riders is reevaluated using an existing postmortem human subjects (PMHS) data set and resulting in a reformulated NII criterion applicable to PMHS tests.

Methods: A recent series of 36 PMHS head/neck component tests was used to examine the risk of neck injury in frontal impacts and to assess the predictive capability of NII for impacts of various orientations. Using force and moment load cell PMHS experimental data, injury risk was assessed using NII evaluated with the ISO 13232-5 algorithms.

Results: The injury risk predictions are compared with the injury outcomes from the head/neck PMHS. The NII criterion underestimated the injury incidence of the PMHS experimental group. The average predicted risk of injuries for the experimental injury tests based on NII across the MAIS levels was 0.7 percent, though there were 11 AIS 3+ injuries observed in the actual testing (30.6%). Using the experimental injury outcomes and the experimental force and moment time histories, the normalizing coefficients from NII are reevaluated to minimize the difference between NII risk assessment and the experimental injury outcome in the least squares (L2) basis. This reanalysis is compared with existing human and PMHS neck injury criteria.

Conclusions: By reanalyzing the NII formulation using an existing PMHS injury data set with known forces and moments and known injury outcomes, a new NIIPMHS is developed that uses PMHS loads to predict injury. This reformulation removes the dependency of the original NII formulation on the forces and moments from motorcyclist anthropomorphic test device (MATD) experiments and simulations yet retains the advantages of the multi-axial neck injury criterion.

Keywords: Neck injury; Head-on collision; Motorcyclist; Regulations
Links

DOI: 10.1080/15389580903501864

PubMed: 20373240

WoS: 000277492100012

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Cited By (1)

Year	Entry
2013	Toomey DE. Cervical Spine Tolerance and Response in Compressive Loading Modes Including Combined Compression and Lateral Bending [PhD thesis]. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University; May 2013.