Finite Elements and CAD Methodologies for the Reconstruction of Pedestrian Accidents

More information

Main author

Dias, J. M. P.

Co-Authors

Portal, R. J. F.

Type of media

PDF

Publication type

Lecture

Publication year

2008

Publisher

17. EVU Conference, Nice

Citation

Dias, J. M. P.; Portal, R. J. F.: Finite Elements and CAD Methodologies for the Reconstruction of Pedestrian Accidents.17th EVU Conference, Nice 2008

English, 11 pages, 13 figures, 30 references

The development of accurate reconstruction models for pedestrians is a topic of actual interest. It is relatively well known how the height and mass of the pedestrian affects its projection, as also the global geometric characteristics of the vehicle. However there are some lacks in the knowledge of how the vehicle front’ structural components, influences the projection and biomechanical injury criteria. To develop accurate computational models for the design of structures such as pedestrian-friendly fronts for the vehicles, the deformation of such structures must be taken into account, because the contact surfaces changes during the impact and this affects the biomechanical criteria and thrown distance of the pedestrians.
The design methodology presented in this work, involves the development of the structures using a 3D CAD system, where the geometry is migrated to the finite elements program Ansys in order to develop the meshes. The final meshes are imported to the multibody dynamics Madymo software in order to simulate the impact between the structures and a human multibody model. With these methodologies the deformation of the structures are taken into account and also biomechanical criteria’s such as HIC (Head Injury Criteria) are evaluated. Although this methodology is not suitable for current accidents because of the time and costs involved, these models can be used to validate other accident reconstruction software or procedures.
The developed models are applied to different collision scenarios at different velocities with a child, and adults’ male and female models. The results obtained are compared with other models such as PC-Crash and analytic models, showing the validity and drawbacks of the models and methods used for pedestrian reconstruction.