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Comparison of two scaling approaches for the development of biomechanical multi-body human models

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Abstract

Dimensional scaling approaches are widely used to develop multi-body human models in injury biomechanics research. Given the limited experimental data for any particular anthropometry, a validated model can be scaled to different sizes to reflect the biological variance of population and used to characterize the human response. This paper compares two scaling approaches at the whole-body level: one is the conventional mass-based scaling approach which assumes geometric similarity; the other is the structure-based approach which assumes additional structural similarity by using idealized mechanical models to account for the specific anatomy and expected loading conditions. Given the use of exterior body dimensions and a uniform Young’s modulus, the two approaches showed close values of the scaling factors for most body regions, with 1.5 % difference on force scaling factors and 13.5 % difference on moment scaling factors, on average. One exception was on the thoracic modeling, with 19.3 % difference on the scaling factor of the deflection. Two 6-year-old child models were generated from a baseline adult model as application example and were evaluated using recent biomechanical data from cadaveric pediatric experiments. The scaled models predicted similar impact responses of the thorax and lower extremity, which were within the experimental corridors; and suggested further consideration of age-specific structural change of the pelvis. Towards improved scaling methods to develop biofidelic human models, this comparative analysis suggests further investigation on interior anatomical geometry and detailed biological material properties associated with the demographic range of the population.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Applied Biomechanics, University of Virginia, 4040 Lewis and Clark Drive, Charlottesville, VA, 22911, USA

    Bingbing Nie, Taewung Kim, Yan Wang, Varun Bollapragada & Jeff R. Crandall

  2. State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Yan Wang

  3. Google, Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA, 94043, USA

    Tom Daniel

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  1. Bingbing Nie
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  6. Jeff R. Crandall
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Correspondence to Taewung Kim.

Appendices

Appendix A: Validation of the baseline model

The baseline model was validated using volunteer and PMHS responses in various impact tests reported in existing literature. The thorax response under frontal and the pelvis response under lateral blunt impacts were provided as examples. Corridors of the force time histories of thorax and pelvis blunt impact presented in the standard Kroell impact test (1994) and by Bouquet et al. (1994) were investigated [45, 46]. Blunt impact simulations on the baseline model were set up using identical conditions to that employed in the experiments (Fig. A.1(a), (b)). The bending moment vs. deflection response corridors by Ivarsson et al. (2004, 2005) was used in developing the lower extremity models [19, 47, 48]. Mid-span thigh bending simulation was set up according to the experimental conditions (Fig. A.1(c)).

Fig. A.1
figure 13

Schematic of the simulation setup for baseline model validation

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For the thorax and pelvis blunt impact, most response of the baseline model was within the corridors although part of the curves was along the lower limit of the force boundary (Fig. A.2(a), (b)). Moment time histories of the thigh bending simulation correlated well with the average of the experimental corridor (Fig. A.2(c)). Therefore, the baseline was believed to be capable of predicting the kinematics of the upper torso and lower extremity under impact conditions.

Fig. A.2
figure 14

Response of the baseline model under blunt impacts with experimental corridors

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Appendix B: Body dimensions and segment weights for the 50th percentile adult and the 6YO child

Table B.1 Anthropometry information for the 50th percentile adult and the 6YO child
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Nie, B., Kim, T., Wang, Y. et al. Comparison of two scaling approaches for the development of biomechanical multi-body human models. Multibody Syst Dyn 38, 297–316 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11044-016-9502-2

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