SEAS Researchers and Graduate Students Present Papers at the 2008 SAE World Congress

SEAS congratulates its five researchers and graduate students who presented papers at the 2008 SAE World Congress held at Cobo Center, Detroit, on April 14-17, 2008.

The SAE is composed of tens of thousands of engineers from all over the world who share information and exchange ideas to advance the engineering of mobility systems. Its World Congress is a world's fair of automotive technology, at which engineers reveal experimental findings, present mathematical equations, and talk about general opportunities in the field.

The five SEAS presentations were:

Title: Evaluating Frontal Crash Test Force-Deformation Data for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Frontal Crash Compatibility
Research Question/Objective: When two vehicles crash, what level of structural interaction between the two vehicles leads to the best opportunity for the occupants of both vehicles to walk away without severe injury?
Presenter/Senior Author: Kennerly H. Digges/Khaled Mostafa
Data: Engineering signals taken from numerous passenger vehicle crashes done under the New Car Assessment Program.
Findings: The more aggressive vehicle in a crash needs to dissipate roughly half of the aggressive vehicle’s energy before reaching a force level 500 kilo Newton force.

Title: Side Impact Risk for 7 – 13 Year Old Children
Research Question/Objective: What is the injury mechanism associated with children around 10-years-old in a side crash?
Presenter/Senior Author: Paul Scullion
Data: Six hundred real-world crashes with children collected by the Department of Transportation.
Findings: Injuries sustained by the child’s head and face account for approximately half of the total Harm. Measures to help better protect the head and face of child occupants from the side interior, such as increased padding of the vehicle interior or curtain airbags, may result in a reduction of the overall societal cost of side impact collisions.

Title: A Study of the IIHS Frontal Pole Impact Test
Research Question/Objective: In what way are vehicle crashes into objects like telephone poles so deadly?
Presenter/Senior Author: Pradeep Mohan/Seong-Woo Hong
Data: Engineering signals taken from numerous passenger vehicle crashes done under the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Findings: In the center rigid pole impact, the pole missed the side rails, a vehicle’s primary energy-absorbing component. The occupants in the no-rail type of crash would benefit by a transverse connection to the frame rails.

Title: A Study of the Rear Seat Occupant Safety using a 10-Year-Old Child Dummy in the New Car Assessment Program
Research Question/Objective: In vehicle crashes, are the restraint systems in the rear sear as good as the restraints in the front seat?
Presenter/Senior Author: Rick Morgan/Seong-Woo Hong
Data: Engineering signals taken from numerous passenger vehicle crashes done under the New Car Assessment Program.
Findings: In the NCAP tests, almost every front-seated adult got a high rating of 4 or 5 Stars. In the rear seat of the NCAP vehicles, the child dummies got a wide rating spread all the way from the lowest 1 Star to a high rating of 5 Stars.

Title: Severe Head and Neck Injuries in NASS Rear Impacts
Research Question/Objective: In a rear impact to a passenger vehicle, will fewer neck injuries occur in a non deforming seat back?
Presenter/Senior Author: Richard Galli
Data: Real-world crashes of rear impacts to passenger vehicles collected by the Department of Transportation.
Findings: Severe injuries and fatalities occurred in vehicle seats with permanent deformation as well as in vehicle seats without permanent deformation.