Investigation on the Effect of Malaysian Anthropometric Size in Vehicle Crash Safety by using Finite Element Method

Abstract

In general, most vehicle safety is developed and optimized using a standard crash dummy, in which the sizes and mass of the anthropometric data are primarily referred to the US population. In other words, it can be deduced that the safety configuration of such vehicles is not optimized for Malaysian or even Asian populations, which might cause severe injury. Therefore, in this paper, the injury is investigated using the actual Malaysian anthropometric data. To be specific, the Hybrid III 50th percentile dummy H350 is scaled to Malaysian 50th percentile dummy H350M, integrated into the vehicle, and analyzed using the finite element method. Using the newly H350M, the results showed the neck forces and moments are slightly reduced while the other injury parameters remained similar. There is also a noticeable increase in chest acceleration from 54.1g to 58.0g. The most critical assessment on the head injury by using the HIC15 method has shown a significant increase from 596 to 913, which could lead to severe head injury.