Neck injuries to restrained children in frontal impacts have been reported. Thus, a need for protection criteria for the child neck has emerged.
The paper describes new research on the subject as well as a study on available data:
- Accident reconstruction: Reconstruction of two accidents with children in forward facing child seats using TN0 dummies were reported by Lowne et al. at ESV 1987 (1). These tests were repeated with a 3-year old US child dummy equipped with an instrumented neck.
- Rearward facing child seat test data: Results from the test series above were compared with results from sled tests with rearward facing child seats. No serious neck injuries have been recorded in the Volvo accident files for the CRS in the tested rearward facing configuration.
- Other research: Scaling of adult neck protection criteria as well as results from out-of-position work performed by other researchers were also used as input.
Synthesis from this set of data is performed for neck tensile axial force, shear force and forward bending moment respectively. Levels from the input sources above are compared and the data set is analysed with respect to the relation with neck and, where possible, head injuries. Using the synthesis as a basis, the following values are suggested as guidelines for neck protection criteria for child neck injury assessment:
- Tensile axial force: 1OOON
- Shear force: 300N
- Forward bending moment: 30 Nm