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The occupant's pelvis is most susceptible to injuries in side collision accidents. To further investigate the pelvis biomechanical responses and injury mechanisms in side impacts, a biofidelic pelvis finite element (FE) model was created. In contrast to previous studies, the model was based directly on the CT data of a volunteer representing the 50th percentile Chinese male. Both cortical and cancellous bone were modeled with hexahedral elements. Through model validations against Post Mortem Human Subjects (PMHS) tests, the pelvis responses and injuries under side impacts were analyzed. Meanwhile, additional simulations were carried out utilizing the validated model to study the effects of the femoral head, impactor pad and impactor velocity on pelvic injuries. The results indicated that the most frequent injury type of the pelvis is pubic rami fracture, followed by fractures of the femoral head, greater trochanter and acetabulum. In validation against the test of Guillemot et al., the critical load of pelvic fracture was 3.8 kN. In validation against the tests of Beason et al., the peak impact force under unpadded load and padded load was 4.3 kN and 3.1 kN, respectively, while the (VC)max was 0.25 m/s and 0.16 m/s, respectively. Peak impact force appears to be a reasonable criterion to assess pelvic injury. Moreover, the femoral head and impactor pad play an important role in absorbing impact energy, distributing impact load, and alleviating pelvic injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to predict and evaluate the human head fractures and brain damage caused by rotational acceleration in car crashes, both geometric and finite element (FE) models for human head having Chinese body features are established and verified based on the CT scanning on a 50 percentile Chinese male volunteer. The comparison of the results of simulation on FE model in terms of kinematic and dynamic responses with those of experiment in this paper as well as Nahum's and Trosseille's classical experiments show that their intracranial pressure distributions all assume a coup-contrecoup pressure gradient distribution mode and their peak pressures agree well with each other. These demonstrate the high biofidelity of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]