Investigating the Thoracic Biomechanical Responses of Rear Seated 50th Percentile Male Anthropomorphic Test Devices and Post Mortem Human Surrogates During Frontal Motor Vehicle Collisions

Frontal motor vehicle collisions (MVCs) account for the majority of injuries and fatalities in MVCs according to the Fatality Analysis Reporting Systems (FARS). One of the most commonly injured regions of the body during MVCs is the thorax. While there are fewer adult passengers riding in the rear seat compared to the front seat, the number of adults in the rear seat may increase dramatically in the near future with the rise of ridesharing services and highly automated vehicles (HAVs). With the increase in exposure for adults riding in the rear seat, the safety of these passengers needs to be evaluated. Previous research has shown that occupant protection in the rear seat is disproportionately lower than that of the front seat in modern vehicles due to the focus on front seat occupants in both regulatory and market-driven crash tests. This has resulted in many of the occupant safety systems, e.g., pretensioners (PT), load limiters (LL), and airbags, being widely available in the front seat, but sparsely available in the rear seat. Anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) have been developed to investigate occupant safety during frontal MVCs and can be utilized in the investigation of rear seat occupant injuries. However, the biofidelity and injury risk criteria used for these ATDs has only been validated when seated in the front seat. To validate the response and injury risk predictions of existing frontal ATDs in the rear seat it is necessary to generate new biomechanical data in the rear seat of modern vehicles. The purpose of this work is to quantify the biomechanical responses of two frontal ATDs, i.e., the Hybrid III and THOR-50M 50th percentile male ATDs, and 50th percentile male post mortem human surrogates (PMHS) seated in the rear seat of modern vehicles, which have various seat geometries and restraint types, during frontal MVCs. Emphasis is placed on comparisons between the thoracic responses of the three human surrogates e.g., thoracic deflection time histories, and thoracic injury risks, i.e., ATD injury risk prediction versus instances of PMHS injuries. A series of twenty-four frontal sled tests were first conducted with the HIII and THOR-50M ATDs seated in the rear seats of seven vehicle test bucks with varying seat geometries and two different restraint types. Three vehicles had advanced restraints while four had conventional restraints. Three different crash pulses were used derived from vehicle specific US New Car Assessment Program frontal crash data: Scaled (32kph), Generic (32kph), and NCAP85 (56kph). Thoracic injury metrics were not exceeded in the lower severity pulses for either ATD but were exceeded during some of the high severity tests. A matched comparison analysis between a front and rear seated Hybrid III 50th percentile male ATD is presented second that highlights the disparities between front and rear seat iii occupant safety of modern vehicles during frontal MVCs. The Hybrid III ATD data were used for this comparison. Thoracic injury risk was found to be higher for the rear seated HIII across all vehicles, while thoracic acceleration was lower in the rear than the front for some vehicles. PMHS thoracic responses and injury risk equations were then evaluated in four of the vehicles used for the ATD tests using the high severity sled pulse, i.e., NCAP85 (56kph). Thoracic acceleration and normalized deflection values were higher in vehicles with conventional restraints, and the location of maximum deflection was always inboard of the sternum. The resulting thoracic injuries ranged from AIS 3 to AIS 5. Additionally, there were a larger average number of rib fractures in vehicles with conventional restraints versus advanced restraints. A multi-point deflection injury risk equation predicted injury the best. However the less censored rib fracture data that were obtained suggest that all three of the injury equations evaluated could be improved. Lastly, the PMHS data were used to assess the similarities in thoracic response between the ATDs and PMHS. An objective rating metric was used for the response comparison. The HIII had a slightly better average score than the THOR-50M; however, the THOR-50M had a more biofidelic kinematic response during the tests. This analysis furthers the understanding of the effect of different occupant protection systems on thoracic injury risk in a rear seat environment and the biofidelity of frontal 50th percentile male ATDs in the rear seat.