Results of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's thoracic side impact protection research program

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Hackney, James R.¹; Monk, Michael W.¹; Hollowell, William T.¹; Sullivan, Lisa K.¹; Willke, Donald T.²

Results of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's thoracic side impact protection research program

Proceedings of the SAE Government/industry Meeting & Exposition

Affiliations

¹National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C.

²Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
Abstract

An extensive research program to evaluate the feasibility of improved side impact protection has been conducted by the National Highway Traffic Administration. This program concentrated on the potential reduction in thoracic injuries to vehicle occupants in side impact.

Test conditions, test procedures, and test hardware for evaluating thoracic side impact protection were defined, developed, and evaluated. Injury mitigation concepts which included vehicle structural modifications and the addition of padding to the inner door surface were developed and evaluated. Test results support the feasibility of providing significant improvements in thoracic side impact protection.

In addition, side impact tests were conducted on ten production automobiles. Results from these tests indicated a relatively low injury potential for occupants in some vehicles and a very high injury potential for occupants in other vehicles. This large range of performance suggests that side impact improvements needed by some of the vehicle fleet are within the state-of-the-art.
Links

DOI: 0.4271/840886

SAE: 840886

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Cited By (13)

Year	Entry
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1985	Monk MW, Willke DT. Side impact aggressiveness attributes. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Technical Conference on Experimental Safety Vehicles (ESV). July 1-4, 1985; Oxford, England.637-648. SAE 856083.
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1985	Henson SE, Huang M, Hultman RW, Parekh IS, Grush ES, Pike JA. Testing the side impact tests: method and some initial results. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Technical Conference on Experimental Safety Vehicles (ESV). July 1-4, 1985; Oxford, England.667-715. SAE 856086.
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