Proposed Method for Development of Small Female and Midsize Male Thorax Dynamic Response Corridors in Side and Forward Oblique Impact Tests

Despite the increasing knowledge of the thorax mechanics, the effects of inter-individual differences on the mechanical response are difficult to take into account. Several methods are available in the literature to refine the biofidelity corridors or to extrapolate them to other populations (eg: children, small females, large males). Because of the lack of concrete cases, the relevance of the assumptions is rarely investigated. In 2014, Baudrit et al. published data on thorax dynamic responses of small female and midsize male Post Mortem Human Subjects in side and forward oblique impact tests. The impactor mass was 23.4 kg for all the tests and the nominal impact speed was 4.3 m/s. The diameter of the rigid disk was 130 and 152 mm respectively for the small female specimens and for the midsize male specimens. The authors found that the maximum impact force was a function of the total body mass for each loading. They also reported that the ratio of dissipated energy on total deformation energy was almost constant and equal to 0.88. From these observations, a method was developed to aggregate data of the whole PMHS sample and to construct force time history and deflection time history corridors, for the 50th male and the 5th female, in pure lateral and in forward oblique tests. These corridors are provided in the paper and compared to the literature. Scaling factors derived from the corridors are also provided and used to evaluate the assumptions associated with the corridors provided in the literature.