DYNAMIC RESPONSE OF HUMAN AND PRIMATE HEAD AND NECK TO +GY IMPACT ACCELERATION

Abstract

The report presents the first study of human and chimpanzee response to lateral (+Gy) impact acceleration with three dimensional inertial instrumentation of the head and of the first thoracic vertebral (T1) body. Thirty-four human experiments using six volunteers are reported. The experiments ranged from 2 G to 7.5G peak sled acceleration. Twelve chimpanzee experiments with head and T1 measurement systems identical to those used on human subjects were conducted, and ranged from 6 G to 20 G peak sled acceleration. The data for all experiments are presented. The human lateral response is considerably different from the -Gx response previously reported. There are also major differences between human and chimpanzee response. The implications of the data for modeling and the validation of such models are discussed.