Motorcoach Safety Research – Interior Impacts and Compartmentalization

Details

• Creators:
  Duffy, Steve ; Prasad, Aloke
• Corporate Creators:
  United States. Department of Transportation. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Vehicle Research and Test Center
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Motor vehicles
  • Impact
  • Vehicle compartments
  • Crashes
  • Crash injury research
  • Crash victim simulation
  • Head
  • Crashworthiness
  • Seats
  • Buses
  More +
• Publication/ Report Number:
  DOT HS 813 146
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.21949/1530228
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Edition:
  Final report
• Corporate Publisher:
  United States. Department of Transportation. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Abstract:
  In response to the MAP-21 Reauthorization Act of 2012 and research of crashworthiness features of motorcoaches, NHTSA initiated research of occupant protection in motorcoaches. This report describes technologies that may enhance that protection from two perspectives – interior head impact protection from padding and the compartmentalization safety concept from enhanced seat designs. To evaluate head injury in a crash, free-motion headform impact tests were performed on motorcoach seats and to the interior surfaces of motorcoaches. The results showed that the seats and bus interiors can produce high head injury criterion (HIC) responses. Padding types could reduce baseline HIC values by 50 to 85 percent. Sled tests conducted on seats with lap-shoulder belts showed that test dummies were contained in their seating compartment during the impact and rebound phases for every test condition, and all seat attachments remained intact. A comparison of dummy kinematics between the physical sled tests and computer simulations showed very good agreement.
• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/57150/dot_57150_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 9.50 MB]
• Collection(s):
  NHTSA - Vehicle Safety Research
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:7d61f0a91c7b261a3a5a570ff0a3d48aad98801faa82911c94af810a24fffc3f7ac97ca1ee9f763c4b08f01bc958308b93f84d332515289587e5fed57be38d6b