Determination of Kinematic and Dynamic Behavior in the Driver’s Skull upon the Impact with the Steering Wheel

Abstract

At European level, one of the main causes of death rates is generated by severe injuries following traffic accidents. The most serious consequences of traffic accidents result from lesions in the head. In this study, we aim to determine the kinematic and dynamic behavior in the driver's skull after the occurrence of a frontal collision by computer modelling. The frontal collision between the vehicle and the rigid wall was taken into consideration, while observing the driver's behavior, by means of the LS-Dyna software. To increase the accuracy of the results, in the last phase of the study, the dynamic modeling was carried out on a skull model, which has been scanned previously. The skull motion law depends on the speed variation computed after determining the kinematic and dynamic behavior of the Hybrid III 5th percentile dummy. To simulate the contact between the head (skull) - wheel, it was assumed that the passive safety system, namely, the airbag system is not activated.