First-place team in National Highway Traffic Safety Administration international design competition use Endevco pressure sensors in developing surrogate lung to measure impact injury
A team of graduate students working at the Virginia Tech - Wake Forest University Center for Injury Biomechanics won an international design competition sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The project took first prize at the 2007 Enhanced Safety of Vehicles Conference in Lyon, France, in a competition that included eight other teams representing North America, Asia, and Europe.
The winning project, entitled “Design, Development, and Analysis of a Pulmonary Surrogate for use in ATDs,” involved development of a surrogate lung that can provide increased data to improve vehicle safety. Using high-accuracy Endevco model 8510C-15 pressure sensors, the lung model measures pressure spikes seen by the lung in vehicle impact testing. The ultimate goal is to develop a commercial surrogate that can relate pressure data to injury levels and provide an improved measure for occupant protection in the vehicle being tested. By the team’s estimation, the cost of such a tool is relatively low compared to a typical instrumented dummy.
The system developed by the Wake Forest students has shown adequate sensitivity and repeatability from the pressure sensors to merit further development of a tool for use by crash labs. What is needed is an injury risk function relating impact velocity, penetration depth, and energy as determined by the pressure data of the surrogate. Continuing research at Wake Forest and elsewhere is being done to investigate lung injury levels, such as volume of lung contusion, to a controlled insult with the output applied to completing the injury risk function. A validated injury risk function, coupled with the predictive capability of the lung surrogate, would lead to an excellent tool to supplement the capabilities of current crash dummies. If you want to see more on this topic please visit..."
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