In the automobile occupant safety, lower extremity protection is of growing concern. Indeed, the number of lethal injuries like head and thorax injury are decreased because of the protection mechanisms like the belt and the airbag. In addition, numerous lower extremity injuries have considerable public health implications.

At present, biomechanical tests were performed on the cadaver ankle/foot complex in the static and dynamic range in order to understand the injury mechanisms of the ankle/foot complex found in car crash.

However only a few numerical models of the human ankle/foot complex, in particular models with the diverse joints of the ankle/foot complex have been developed so far.

In a previous paper ([1]), the simulation of Begeman‘s tests permitted a preliminary calibration of a human ankle numerical model under impact loading. The objective Was to simulate and understand the gross kinematics of the human ankle/foot complex during the dorsiflexion under impact loading In this paper, after a brief description of the human ankle/foot model by the authors, the influence of the modeling of the soft tissues using a non-linear material model and of elastic bones is described. While the non-linear behavior of the soft tissues has not much influence on the global kinematics of the ankle/foot complex, the fact that the main bones are modeled by elastic shell elements instead of rigid bodies has a more pronounced effect on the dorsiflexion ankle under impact loading.

Therefore, in future work, more effort will go into modeling most of the bones as deformable. In addition, fractures criteria could be taken in account.