Reconstruction of occupant kinematics and kinetics for real world accidents

A detailed study of vehicle and occupant movement during an accident is often of great interest. When reconstructing car accidents, quiet often questions arise regarding occupant movement and loading. This paper discusses the numerical results compared to experimental test results. For two selected full scale car to car collisions (frontal and side impact) three dimensional vehicle movement as well as dummy accelerations were compared. Additional emphasis were set on the influence of the crash pulse on the occupant behaviour. For the approach used a constant acceleration during the crash phase was assumed for the occupant simulation, which was performed by coupling the three dimensional car behaviour from PC Crash with a simplified MADYMO model of car interior, restraint system and 50% the Hybrid III dummy model.