A method has been developed to generate models representing subjects of varying anthropometry. This method has been applied to crash-dummy models, and will in the future also be applied to human body models. The first step of the method is to generate a set of target anthropometry parameters from a relevant population. The second step is to scale an existing model towards the desired anthropometry. Different scaling factors are being applied for the different body parts and dimensions. These factors are used to derive body dimensions, mass and inertia properties, joint resistance and contact resistance parameters. For this study on adult subjects it has been assumed that material properties are invariant with subject size. Quasi-static simulations were performed to confirm that the resulting stiffness of complete body parts obey the scaling rules applied to the model components.
The design of a vehicle has been evaluated with respect to passive safety for a wide range of occupant sizes. Starting point was a set of validated frontal impact simulations including Hybrid III dummies. These simulations were repeated with occupant models of varying size and weight. The model setup for the frontal impact simulation was similar the model used in the study of Michaelsen, 1997. The frontal impact simulations have shown a wide range of results for the different types of occupant. Due to different seat positions and body proportions the injury parameters exceed the range of results found for standard dummies.