Analysis of abdominal injuries caused by the submarining phenomenon in the rear seat occupants

Nakane, Keita; Nojiri, Masayoshi; Maekawa, Ryo; Esaki, Makoto; Suzuki, Shigeyuki; Masuda, Yasushi; Hitosugi, Masahito

Affiliations

¹Tokai Rika Co., Ltd.

²Toyoda Gosei Co, Ltd. Japan

³Shiga University of Medical Science, Japan

Abstract

Improvements to vehicle safety have targeted mainly the front seating positions, where the rate of seat belt usage was high and there were many casualties. Recently, rear seat occupant protection become an important challenge, with an increase in usage of seat belts by rear occupants due to new regulations and new performance criteria defined by Japanese and European vehicle assessment programs for rear seating occupants. Some prior analyses of accident data indicate that rear seat belted occupants tend to be injured in abdominal regions in comparison with front seat occupants. Due to this, the need to study the cause of abdominal injuries and how to countermeasure it is becoming indispensable for improving the protection performance of the rear seat occupants. The following two phenomenons are considered as factors which great impacts on abdominal injuries: the submarining phenomenon, lap belt intruding into abdominal region, and the incorrect routing of the belt, lap belt existing initially on abdominal region. However, the relationship between these probable causes and the abdominal injuries in the real world accident is not expressly described in prior studies. Therefore, first, the frequency of the abdominal injuries caused by the submarining phenomenon was estimated by micro analysis of the accident data. Second, the influence on abdominal internal organs, to which the lap belt load was applied, was analyzed using human body FE model THUMS. The results of this analysis indicated that the effect might be applied to abdominal internal organs. As the routing of the lap belt on the pelvis was shown as being very important in this study, a parametric study using Madymo was conducted to determine additional factors that might influence the proper routing of the belt on pelvis. This study narrowed down the factors with big contribution and explains how they were determined

Links

URL: http://www-esv.nhtsa.dot.gov/Proceedings/24/files/24ESV-000023.PDF

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