The objective of this study was to optimize the occupant restraint systems for a light tactical vehicle in frontal crashes. A combination of sled testing and computational modeling were performed to find the optimal seatbelt and airbag designs for protecting occupants represented by three size of ATDs and two military gear configurations. This study started with 20 sled frontal crash tests to setup the baseline performance of existing seatbelts, which have been presented previously; followed by parametric computational simulations to find the best combinations of seatbelt and airbag designs for different sizes of ATDs and military gear configurations involving both driver and passengers. Then 12 sled tests were conducted with the simulation-recommended restraint designs. The test results were further used to validate the models. Another series of computational simulations and 4 sled tests were performed to fine-tune the optimal restraint design solutions. The sled tests with the optimized seatbelt and airbag designs provided significant improvement of occupant protection from the baseline tests in terms of the head, neck, chest, and lower extremity injury measures. Using a baseline seatbelt without an airbag, the ATD tended to contact the steering wheel or the instrument panel, or sustained a significant head whipping motion inducing large head and neck injury measures. By adding the airbag and reducing the load limit in the seatbelt, the injury measures were improved significantly. This study demonstrated the benefit of adding a properly designed airbag and advanced seatbelt to improve the occupant protection in frontal crashes under an environment representing a light tactical vehicle.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Optimizing Occupant Restraint Systems for Tactical Vehicles in Frontal Crashes


    Additional title:

    Sae Technical Papers


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    WCX World Congress Experience ; 2018



    Publication date :

    2018-04-03




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




    Optimizing Occupant Restraint Systems for Tactical Vehicles in Frontal Crashes

    Hu, Jingwen / Orton, Nichole Ritchie / Chen, Cong et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2018


    Occupant kinematics and restraint systems in small overlay frontal crashes

    Sherwood,C. / Nolan,J. / Zuby,D. et al. | Automotive engineering | 2012



    Restraint Robustness in Frontal Crashes

    Barsan, Aida / Smith, David L. / Saunders, James | SAE Technical Papers | 2007


    Improving occupant protection systems in frontal crashes

    Hollowell,W.T. / Stucki,S.L. / National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,NHTSA,US | Automotive engineering | 1996