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Computational Seated Pedestrian Impact Design of Experiments with Ultralight Wheelchair

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Abstract

Pedestrians who use wheelchairs (seated pedestrians) report higher mortality rates than standing pedestrians in vehicle-to-pedestrian collisions but the cause of this mortality is poorly understood. This study investigated the cause of seated pedestrian serious injuries (AIS 3+) and the effect of various pre-collision variables using finite element (FE) simulations. An ultralight manual wheelchair model was developed and tested to meet ISO standards. The GHBMC 50th percentile male simplified occupant model and EuroNCAP family car (FCR) and sports utility vehicle (SUV) were used to simulate vehicle collisions. A full factorial design of experiments (n = 54) was run to explore the effect of pedestrian position relative to the vehicle bumper, pedestrian arm posture, and pedestrian orientation angle relative to the vehicle. The largest average injury risks were at the head (FCR: 0.48 SUV: 0.79) and brain (FCR: 0.42 SUV: 0.50). The abdomen (FCR: 0.20 SUV: 0.21), neck (FCR: 0.08 SUV: 0.14), and pelvis (FCR: 0.02 SUV: 0.02) reported smaller risks. 50/54 impacts reported no thorax injury risk, but 3 SUV impacts reported risks ≥ 0.99. Arm (gait) posture and pedestrian orientation angle had larger effects on most injury risks. The most dangerous arm posture examined was when the hand was off the wheelchair handrail after wheel propulsion and the two more dangerous orientations were when the pedestrian faced 90° and 110° away from the vehicle. Pedestrian position relative to the vehicle bumper played little role in injury outcomes. The findings of this study may inform future seated pedestrian safety testing procedures to narrow down the most concerning impact scenarios and design impact tests around them.

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Abbreviations

AIS:

Abbreviated Injury Scale

BrIC:

Brain injury criteria

CAD:

Computer aided drawing

DOE:

Design of experiments

FCR:

Family car/roadster

FE:

Finite element

GHBMC:

Global Human Body Models Consortium

HIC:

Head injury criteria

HIT:

Head impact time

ISO:

International standards organization

M50-OS:

Male 50th percentile simplified occupant

Nij:

Neck injury criteria

PMHS:

Postmortem human surrogate

SUV:

Sports utility vehicle

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Global Human Body Models Consortium, LLC (GHBMC) for providing their M50-OS model used in this study. All findings and views reported in this manuscript are based on the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily represent the consensus or view of the GHBMC. We would also like to thank the Advanced Research Computing organization at Virginia Tech for providing us event logs from their research computing cluster.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, Center for Injury Biomechanics, Virginia Tech, Collegiate Square Innovation Place (0151), 460 Turner St NW, Suite 304, Blacksburg, VA, 24060-3325, USA

    Daniel Grindle & Costin Untaroiu

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Correspondence to Costin Untaroiu.

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Associate Editor Stefan M. Duma oversaw the review of this article.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Fig. 8 and Tables 3, 4, 5, 6.

Figure 8
figure 8

ISO tests on wheelchair model (a) lateral tipping test (b) handrail impact test (c) backrest impact test (d) castor impact test.

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Table 3 Seated pedestrian regional injury risks (AIS3 +) and HIT outcomes.
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Table 4 Linear correlation coefficients (r) between pre-impact variables and injury risks.
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Table 5 Quadratic correlation coefficients (r) between pre-impact variables and injury risks.
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Table 6 Seated pedestrian injury risk t-test results (p ≤ 0.05). Bold denotes statistically significant results.
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Grindle, D., Untaroiu, C. Computational Seated Pedestrian Impact Design of Experiments with Ultralight Wheelchair. Ann Biomed Eng 51, 1523–1534 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-023-03157-6

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