Substantial biomechanical research in the field of human body strength particularly in the past 45 years has been carried out to be able to protect people in various accidental configurations. In this paper the various available protection criteria will be presented and possible applications in the field of Road Traffic accidents will be explained. The criteria concern the head, neck, thorax, abdomen, pelvis and the leg of a human body. The required means (dummies, impactors and measuring equipment) for possible procedures for testing the passive safety of rail coach structures will be outlined. A set of criteria will be discussed which could be applied to assess the injury risk in high deceleration impacts, in impacts with longer impact duration and in trapping of persons as consequence of accidental ruptures of structures of different transportation means. The main difficulty to transfer the protection criteria used in the field of passive vehicle safety to structures of other transportation systems is that frequently in the crash zone of such systems the trapping forces are substantially higher than any human biomechanical tolerance levels. On the other hand there seems to be a certain potential to improve safety in these cases where structures do not collapse in the accident and where the occupants are mainly loaded by deceleration, by impacts to the internal structures of the compartment and by forces caused by the impact of other occupants, luggage and lighter structures of the transportation means compartment. The discussion of the application of protection criteria commonly used to assess the passive safety of vehicles in relatively frequent car accidents can only be considered as a first approach to propose safety requirements concerning extremely seldom accidents with rail coaches.
Biomechanical protection criteria to assess injury risk in road traffic accidents
Biomechanische Schutzkriterien zur Abschätzung von Verletzungsrisiken bei Verkehrsunfällen
2002
7 Seiten, 9 Bilder, 8 Quellen
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Englisch
Biomechanik , Sicherheitsvorrichtung , Straßenverkehr , Verkehrsunfall , Kopf (Körperteil) , Hals (Anatomie) , Brustkorb , Abdomen , Becken (Bewegungsapparat) , Bein (Anatomie) , Dummy , Messeinrichtung , mechanischer Stoß , Einwirkungszeit , Geschwindigkeitsabnahme , Schienenfahrzeug , Verletzung , Experimentalmethode , passive Sicherheit
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