UB Virtual Reality Laboratory

SIMULATION OF OCCUPANT DYNAMICS DURING VEHICLE CRASHES USING VIRTUAL REALITY

Goal
Develop a virtual environment to simulate automobile crash and study its effect on occupants.

Abstract

A Virtual Environment (VE) for Automobile Crash Simulation was developed in which human motions during automobile crash accidents can be visually simulated. Using navigation devices, the Virtual Environment provides an interactive viewing mode for the simulations. By using the Graphical User Interface (GUI), the user is allowed to adjust different parameters so that they can see different simulation results. The crash data used for the simulations is generated by a dynamics program, which employs Lagrangian's Equations to develop the governing dynamical equations. A 50th percentile dummy is used to simulate the occupant dynamic responses under different kinds of crash environments. The biodynamic model of the dummy is composed of a series of linked rigid bodies simulating the human body segments. The examples presented in this paper provide a simulation of gross kinematics in automobile accident impacts. Comparison with the experimental data shows that the resulting simulation model is fairly accurate. This Virtual environment can also be used to visualize effects of crash on vehicle occupant based on data provided from other sources such as Finite Element Models and real crash testing data.used.