The BioRID-II rear impact dummy is used for assessing the level of protection of car seats against whiplash associated disorders (WAD) for many years. This level of protection is evaluated in consumer tests. For these tests comparatively low thresholds were introduced. Many questions which are related to injury criteria and their respective biomechanical tolerance levels remain unresolved. These low load ranges hold a claim against a high robustness of measuring devices used with respect to repeatability and reproducibility. However, especially the low load range and the low signals from the sensors show a certain variation. Therefore, a reliable assessment of the level of protection of car seats is difficult.

The presented study is focused on the assessment of repeatability and reproducibility of the BioRID-II. A series of sled tests with eight individual BioRID-IIg dummies were conducted under well defined and controlled boundary conditions. The dummies were placed in four hard bucket seats to ensure stable test conditions and to avoid any variation generated by regular car seats. Variations caused by the seats and the seating procedures were minimized by testing every dummy in each seat. Particular attention was paid to very accurate test reruns to keep the test variations as small as possible.

Dummy certification tests prior and after the test series were conducted to determine possible changes of the dummy performance induced by the test program.

Finally, the study was completed by running simulations and parametric studies with the FAT BioRID-II FE-model. The objective of this computational investigation was the identification of potential causations for the variances particularly seen in the upper and lower neck responses.