Head Impacts of Standing Passengers in Rail Transports
Gaetan Hanen, Inrets
In case of crash, standing passengers in rail transports
face many hazards. Among the most critical are impacts against
the environment, due to their kinematics induced during the
deceleration. We evaluated through physical and numerical
testing the injury risk related to a head impact against a
grabpole in crash situation. Physical tests consisted in an
instrumented dummy's headform impacting a grabpole on a vertical
test rig. A numerical model including a grabpole and Altair's
Free-Motion Headform Model (1) was also built to reproduce
experimental testing. Components of HyperWorks were used and
results were compared with experimentation. The influence
on injury risk of parameters such as velocity or head orientation
was explored through sensitivity studies.
This work is part of European project SafeInteriors (2),
focusing on the improvement of passive safety in rail vehicles.
Conclusions will allow the development of a safer design to
be soon tested through the same process.
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