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Hybrid foetus with an FE head for a pregnant occupant model for vehicle safety investigations.pdf (1.62 MB)

Hybrid foetus with an FE head for a pregnant occupant model for vehicle safety investigations

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journal contribution
posted on 2017-10-23, 13:38 authored by Serpil Acar, M. Meric, Volkan Esat
‘Expecting’, a computational pregnant occupant model, developed to simulate the dynamic response to crash impacts, possesses anthropometric properties of a fifth percentile female at around the 38th week of pregnancy. The model is complete with a finite element uterus and a multi-body foetus which is a novel feature in models of this kind. In this paper, the effect of incorporating a foetus with a finite element head into ‘Expecting’ is investigated. The finite element head was developed using detailed anatomic geometry and projected material properties. Then it was integrated with the ‘Expecting’ model and validated using the lap belt loading and the rigid bar impact tests. The model is then used to simulate frontal impacts at a range of crash severities with seatbelt and airbag, seatbelt only, airbag only as well as no restraint cases to investigate the risk of placental abruption and compare it with the model featuring the original multi-body foetus. The maximum strains developed in the utero-placental interface are used as the main criteria for foetus safety. The results show comparable strain levels to those from the multi-body foetus. It is, therefore, recommended to use the multi-body foetus in simulations as the computation time is more favourable.

Funding

This work was supported by the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Research Council, UK) through funding numerous Pregnant Occupant research projects at Loughborough University. The authors also thank MADYMO.

History

School

  • Design and Creative Arts

Department

  • Design

Published in

International Journal of Crashworthiness

Volume

23

Issue

5

Pages

540 - 548

Citation

ACAR, B.S., MERIC, M. and ESAT, V., 2018. Hybrid foetus with an FE head for a pregnant occupant model for vehicle safety investigations. International Journal of Crashworthiness, 23 (5), pp. 540-548.

Publisher

Taylor & Francis © The Authors

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2017-07-19

Publication date

2017-08-30

Notes

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ISSN

1358-8265

eISSN

1754-2111

Language

  • en

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