Crash test dummy
[1] Modern dummies are usually instrumented to record data such as velocity of impact, crushing force, bending, folding, or torque of the body, and deceleration rates during a collision.
[10] Thirty years later, on September 13, 1899, Henry Bliss became North America's first motor vehicle fatality when hit while stepping off a New York City trolley.
As late as the 1950s, car manufacturers were on public record as saying that vehicle accidents simply could not be made survivable because the forces in a crash were too great.
[citation needed] Detroit's Wayne State University was the first to begin serious work on collecting data on the effects of high-speed collisions on the human body.
They were used to obtain fundamental information about the human body's ability to withstand the crushing and tearing forces typically experienced in a high-speed accident.
The majority of cadavers available were older adults males who had died non-violent deaths; they did not represent a demographic cross-section of accident victims.
[14] Lawrence Patrick, then a professor at Wayne State University, endured some 400 rides on a rocket sled in order to test the effects of rapid deceleration on the human body.
He and his students allowed themselves to be hit in the chest with heavy metal pendulums, impacted in the face by pneumatically driven rotary hammers, and sprayed with shattered glass to simulate window implosion.
A description by Mary Roach of the Eighth Stapp Car Crash and Field Demonstration Conference shows the direction in which research had begun to move.
"[16] One important research objective that could not be achieved with either cadavers or live humans was a means of reducing the injuries caused by impalement on the steering column.
Pigs were used for steering wheel impacts and other cabin collisions because they have an internal structure similar to humans, and can be easily placed correctly via sitting upright in the vehicle.
[17] The ability to sit upright was an important requirement for test animals so that another common fatal injury among human victims, decapitation, could be studied.
In 1978, The University of Michigan Highway Safety Research Institute used baboons as a substitute for human test subjects in car crashes.
THOR is a very advanced dummy because it uses sensors and has a humanlike spine, pelvis, and can capture neck data in 6DOF (six degrees of freedom) motion.
Hybrid IIIs use dummies that directed towards a specific age, for example, a typical ten-year-old, six-year-old, three-year-old, and a grown man.
The information gleaned from cadaver research and animal studies had already been put to some use in the construction of human simulacra as early as 1949, when "Sierra Sam"[21] was created by Samuel W. Alderson at his Alderson Research Labs (ARL) and Sierra Engineering Co. to test aircraft ejection seats, aviation helmets[22] and pilot restraint harnesses.
Hybrid II became the first dummy to comply with the American Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) for testing of automotive lap and shoulder belts.
In 1973, a 50th percentile male dummy was released, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)[23] undertook an agreement with General Motors to produce a model exceeding Hybrid II's performance in a number of specific areas.
He occupies the driver's seat in all the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)[25] 65 km/h (40 mph) offset frontal crash tests.
The primary benefit provided by the Hybrid III is improved neck response in forward flexion and head rotation that better simulates the human.
[27] The Hybrid III dummy for three-, six- and ten-year-olds has its limitations, and does not provide the same physical outcome a human would encounter with a frontal crash.
It was found that when testing the three-year-old Hybrid III dummy, it showed that frontal crashes would most likely cause cervical spine injuries.
This model is accurate for males in the 50th percentile, and it can not easily relate to three-year-olds when dealing with neck and head injuries, which are responsible for 57 percent of car crash fatalities.
[28] Although development started in the 1990s, with the latest design update by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in contract with Humanetics, the first new prototypes were delivered in 2013.
[29] Since then, Europe's New Car Assessment Program became the first agency to adopt THOR into testing protocols, replacing the Hybrid III mid-sized male in the driver's seat.
Designed jointly by the U.S. Army and Diversified Technical Systems (DTS), the project includes an anthropomorphic test device and in-dummy data acquisition and sensor solution.
[34] U.S. Army Research Laboratory and its partners at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab completed biofidelity testing in 2017.
WIAMan includes self-contained internal power and the world's smallest data acquisition system called SLICE6, based on SLICE NANO architecture, eliminating the huge mass of sensor cables normally exiting dummies.
Dr. Astrid Linder led the team of researchers to develop the female crash test dummy which represented the height and weight of women at the 50th and 25th percentiles.
When the dummy has been determined to be ready for testing, calibration marks are fastened to the side of the head to aid researchers when slow-motion films are reviewed later.
