An evaluation methodology for motorcyclists’ wearable airbag protectors based on finite element simulations

Abstract

A method to evaluate the effectiveness of wearable airbag protectors for motorcyclists is proposed in this work. The mitigation of thoracic injury severity in relevant accident conditions was investigated by a multimodel numerical approach. A set of impact conditions, obtained from previous work using multibody models, was used as input data to support the detailed analysis of injury risk with finite element models. The HUMOS II human model and an airbag model were validated from experimental data and coupled to evaluate the performance of the protector. Multiple frontal thoracic impact conditions were simulated on the human model by testing the airbag protector and reference simulations without any protection. A reduction on the skeletal AIS score of 1 was obtained, while the probability of sustaining severe soft tissue injuries was reduced by up to 22% with the safety device. Impact velocity and impactor shape were identified as relevant injury risk factors.