Characteristics of the TRL pedestrian legform and the flexible pedestrian legform impactors in car-front impact tests

Matsui, Yasuhiro; Takagi, Shunsuke; Tanaka, Yoshitomo; Hosokawa, Naruyuki; Itoh, Fujine; Nakasato, Hideto; Watanabe, Noriaki; Yonezawa, Hideki

Affiliations

¹National Traffic Safety and Environment Laboratory, Japan

Abstract

Pedestrian protection is one of the key topics of discussion in the area of vehicle safety legislation in Europe and Japan. Leg injuries are the most common injuries found in nonfatal pedestrian accidents. The EC regulation and Euro NCAP are evaluating pedestrian leg protection performance in current vehicles. The TRL legform impactor is specified by the EC regulation, where Phase 1 took effect during 2005 and a draft phase 2 is scheduled to take effect in 2013. The global technical regulation (GTR) pedestrian protection test protocol was made basically using the TRL legform impactor. However, a flexible legform impactor has been under development. When the flexible legform impactor development is fully completed and evaluated, it is possible that both legform impactors may be determined to be useful in the GTR. Thus, the objective of this study is to investigate the characteristics of pedestrian leg protection performance of the frontal area of current vehicles using the TRL legform impactor and the flexible legform impactor. Different types of vehicles (sedan, sport utility vehicle (SUV), height wagon, and 1 box car) were used. The center of the bumper and center of the side members (i.e., the vehicles main longitudinal beams) were selected as impact locations for the legform impactors tests. This paper discusses an equivalence of injury assessment between the TRL legform impactor and flexible legform impactor.

Links

URL: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv21/09-0206.pdf

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Cited By (1)

Year	Entry
2015	Xu L, Bilkhu S, Farooq I, Hickman J, Jensen J, McCabe K, Nusholtz G. Performance comparison and repeatability evaluation of the Flex PLI and the TRL pedestrian legform impactors. In: Proceedings of the 24th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 8-11, 2015; Gothenburg, Sweden.