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Traffic Injury Prevention

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A Study of Influences of Vehicle Speed and Front

Structure on Pedestrian Impact Responses Using
Mathematical Models
a a a
X. J. Liu , J. K. Yang & P. Lövsund
a
Crash Safety Division, Department of Machine and Vehicle Design , Chalmers University of
Technology , Göteborg, Sweden
Published online: 15 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: X. J. Liu , J. K. Yang & P. Lövsund (2002) A Study of Influences of Vehicle Speed and Front Structure on
Pedestrian Impact Responses Using Mathematical Models, Traffic Injury Prevention, 3:1, 31-42, DOI: 10.1080/15389580210517

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 Traffic Injury Prevention, 3:31–42, 2002
Copyright ° C 2002 Taylor & Francis
1538-9588/02 $12.00 + .00

A Study of Influences
of Vehicle Speed and Front
Structure on Pedestrian
Impact Responses Using
Mathematical Models
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 01:07 17 November 2014

X. J. LIU, J. K. YANG, and P. LÖVSUND

Crash Safety Division, Department of Machine and Vehicle Design, Chalmers University
of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden

A validated pedestrian multibody model was used to investigate the influences of impact speed and
vehicle front structure on the pedestrian dynamic responses in vehicle collisions. To predict the
injury risks of pedestrians at different impact speeds, the injury-related parameters concerning
head, chest and lower extremity areas were calculated from mathematical simulations. Four vehicle
types including large and compact passenger cars, minivans and light trucks were simulated
according to their frequency of involvement in real world accidents. The influences of various
vehicle front shape and compliance parameters were analyzed.
Based on the results from the parametric study, the possible benefits from speed control in urban
area were assessed, and a feasible speed limit was proposed to reduce the risks of pedestrian
injuries. Moreover, the possible countermeasures on basis of vehicle front design to mitigate the
injury severity of the pedestrians were discussed.

Keywords Mathematical Modeling; Pedestrian; Impact Speed; Vehicle Front Design

In the EU countries during 1996, there were 6,769
pedestrian fatalities in vehicle accidents (ETSC, 1999).
The rate of pedestrian deaths per total traffic fatalities
varied from 12% in the USA (NHTSA, 1999), 16.2% in
the EU countries (ETSC, 1999), 26% in China (TAPSM,
1997) to 27% in Japan (Matsui and Ishikawa, 1998).
Among all the factors related to pedestrian accidents,
impact speed and the safety performance of vehicle de-
Received 18 May 2000; accepted 12 April 2001.
This study is sponsored by the Swedish National Road Administration
(Vägverket).
Address correspondence to X. J. Liu, Crash Safety Divisions, Dept. of
Machine and Vehicle Design, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg,
Sweden. E-mail: liuxj@mvd.chalmers.se
31
sign are two key aspects controlling pedestrian injury
severity.
Accident studies (Ashton, 1982; ETSC, 1999) indi-
cated that the majority of the pedestrians are struck by
the front of vehicles in urban and residential area at
crash speeds up to 40 km/h. Children under 15 years
old and elderly people aged above 70 are overrepre-
sented (NHTSA, 1999; Berg et al., 2000). Head and
lower extremities are the most frequently injured body
regions in road accidents. Injuries to the head are the ma-
jor causes of pedestrian fatalities (Mizuno and Kajzer,
2000), whereas injuries to the lower extremities are usu-
ally non-fatal but often have long-term consequences
with possible permanent disability (Schuster et al., 2000;
 32 X. J. LIU ET AL.
Takahashi et al., 2000). Impact speed is the predomi-
nant factor determining the pedestrian injury severity.
At a collision speed of less than 20 km/h, pedestrians
usually sustain only minor injuries, whereas at a speed
above 45 km/h pedestrians are most likely to be killed
(Otte, 1999). An essential increase in injury severity was
observed within the impact speed between 20 and 45
km/h. It thus is important to investigate the injury mech-
anisms and to develop protection counter-measures in
this speed range.
Besides the accident statistics, various evaluation
methods have been implemented in pedestrian protec-
tion research, such as biological specimens (Bunketorp,
1983; Cavallero et al., 1983), mechanical dummies
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(Niederer & Schlumpf, 1984; Higuchi & Akiyama,
1991) and mathematical models (Van Wijk et al., 1983;
Harris & Grew, 1985; Ishikawa et al., 1991). The most
human-like responses and injury mechanisms of body
segments have been obtained with cadavers. However,
such tests are unsuitable for the development and eval-
uation of safety counter-measures due to the limita-
tion of specimen resources and prohibitive experiment
costs. Alternatively several types of mechanical dum-
mies have been used as pedestrian substitute to assess
the aggressiveness of different front structures (Aldman
et al., 1985a; Kajzer & Schroeder, 1992; Huang et al.,
1999; Björklund & Zheng, 2001). Nevertheless, none
of them had shown enough biofidelity to properly pre-
dict the dynamic responses of pedestrian bodies. Fur-
thermore, whole body dummies were found difficult to
handle in the assessment test, since the pedestrian im-
pact responses are sensitive to initial standing posture
and position. Therefore, a sub-system test procedure
was proposed to avoid such complexity and uncertain-
ties (EEVC, 1998). It consists of four separate impactors
representing adult head, child head, pelvis of adult and
thorax of child, as well as lower extremity. However,
these sub-system tests cannot evaluate the integrated
safety performance of a vehicle design in terms of the
overall responses of pedestrian.
As a complement to the experimental studies, two
types of mathematical models were developed. One was
based on the properties of mechanical dummies
(Van Wijk et al., 1983; Harris, 1989; Yoshida &
Matsuhashi, 1998), and another was based on human-
body characteristics (Gibson et al., 1986; Ishikawa et al.,
1993). Human-body models had shown improved biofi-
delity and better correlation with the results from impact
tests with cadaver specimens than dummy-based mod-
els (Ishikawa et al., 1993). However, it was pointed out
that a leg fracture model and realistic knee joint charac-
teristics are necessary to improve the biofidelity of the
lower extremities (Yang, 1997).
Many studies emphasized on the influence of vehi-
cle front shapes on pedestrian kinematics (Niederer &
Schlumpf, 1984; Janssen & Wismans, 1985; Ishikawa
et al., 1991). Hood edge height appears to be an impor-
tant factor on the pedestrian kinematics after the initial
impact between bumper and lower extremity of pedes-
trian, while the deformation properties of vehicle front
structure exhibits only secondary effect on the motion
pattern. Lowering the level of the initial contact point
and increasing the compliance of the bumper was con-
sidered as the effective measures to reduce the injury
severity of legs and knee joint areas (Aldman et al.,
1985b; Kajzer & Schroeder, 1992; Cesari et al., 1994).
However, most of the previous studies only focused on
the bonnet-type vehicle, i.e. passenger cars at a given
impact speed.
Due to the rapid growth of various vehicle types with
different front shapes nowadays, the involvement of ve-
hicle types is considerably different from that of the last
two decades. Accident statistics (NHTSA, 1999) indi-
cated that passenger car accounted for about 56% of
vehicles striking pedestrian followed by van/Utilities
for 17%, pickup/trucks for 17%, and others for about
10%. Mizuno and Kajzer (2000) found that bonnet-type
vehicles tend to incur serious injuries to pedestrian legs,
whereas mini vans are more aggressive to the head
and thorax. However, the effects of impact speed were
excluded, and the aggressiveness of light trucks to
pedestrians was not assessed.
In this study, the influences of vehicle impact speed,
front shape and compliance properties on pedestrian
dynamic responses were evaluated by using a fully val-
idated human-body mathematical model with improved
lateral biofidility, especially in lower extremities with a
human-like knee joint and a breakable lower leg model
(Yang et al., 2000). The effects of different vehicle
types, including large and compact passenger cars, mini
vans and light trucks, were assessed. It is aimed to
demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of travel
speed control and vehicle front design to mitigate pedes-
trian injury severity.
METHOD AND MATERIAL
A parametric study involving a set of variables re-
garding impact speed, vehicle front shape and compli-
ance properties is conducted with the validated pedes-
trian mathematical model (Yang et al., 2000). The effect
of impact speed is examined from 20 to 50 km/h with
four vehicle types according to their frequency of in-
volvement in real world accidents in terms of the calcu-
lated injury parameters. To concisely clarify the specific
 INFLUENCES OF VEHICLE SPEED AND FRONT STRUCTURE
Figure 1 The baseline model setup for car–pedestrian simulations, BCH-Bumper Central Height, BL-Bumper Lead Length,
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HEH = Hood Edge Height, HL = Hood Length, HA = Hood Slope Angle, WA = Windscreen Angle.
effects of geometric and stiffness variables, these two
set of variables are discussed separately at a given im-
pact speed of 40 km/h.
Model Setup
The mathematical model used in this parameter study
is a 50th percentile adult male pedestrian model formu-
lated in MADYMO (Yang et al., 2000), comprising the
human-like knee joint model (Yang & Kajzer, 1992) and
the breakable leg model (Yang et al., 1993). The human-
like knee joint allows more accurate simulation of knee
joint responses, whereas the breakable lower leg model
can predict the bone fracture phenomena when the im-
pact force exceeds the tolerance level. The spherical
joint model is used to describe the neck, shoulder, tho-
racic, lumbar, hip and ankle joints, while elbow joint is
defined as hinge joint model. The motion range of each
joint is restricted to the physiology movements in the
sagittal, coronal and horizontal planes. The stiffness of
the joints is defined as moment-angle functions based
on the biomechanical studies on human joints. Mean-
while the mechanical properties of body segments are
described as force-deformation function, taking into ac-
count the effects of soft tissues.
The validity of the pedestrian model was well ver-
ified with cadaver tests in terms of overall kinemat-
ics, dynamic responses of body segments, as well as
the impact forces. The injury severity of head, pelvis
and lower extremities were well predicted (Yang et al.,
2000). Therefore this pedestrian model is considered
adequate for the evaluation of the influences of vehicle
parameters on the pedestrian responses.
The pedestrian model is struck on the right side at
the central line of vehicle, with the right leg backward
and the left leg forward to represent a walking stance
33
(Figure 1). To avoid the unrealistic protection effects re-
sulting from the shoulder and elbow striking, the pedes-
trian body was rotated 30 degrees inward from a posi-
tion perpendicular to the centerline of vehicle. The right
and left upper arms are inclined rearwards at 30 degree
to the vertical plane, while the lower arms hang natu-
rally down.
Car front model consists of bumper, hood edge, hood
top and windscreen ellipsoids to approximate the
exterior profile of a vehicle. Four wheels are repre-
sented by four identical ellipsoids to produce the brak-
ing deceleration of the vehicle by the friction force
between wheels and ground. The vehicle model is
pitched to provide a geometric attitude equivalent to
0.6 g braking. Force-deformation characteristics of car
front components are obtained from legform and head-
form impactor tests. The friction coefficients are 0.6 for
foot/ground and wheels/ground, and 0.5 for the contacts
between body segments and car front structures.
Design of Parametric Study
The parametric study is divided into three parts. The
first part concerns the influence of impact speed, taking
into account the involvement of different vehicle mod-
els including large and compact passenger cars, mini
vans and light trucks. The main purpose is to predict
the effect of impact speed on the injury risk of pedes-
trian exposed to the real world traffic accidents. The
injury patterns with regard to different vehicle types
will also be compared. Secondly, the effects of vari-
ous vehicle front shape parameters on the injuries of
pedestrians will be discussed with passenger car mod-
els at impact speed of 40 km/h. It is aimed to reveal the
possible improvement of vehicle shape to mitigate the
injury severity of pedestrians. Finally the influence of
 34 X. J. LIU ET AL.

Table I Selected factors and levels of validation simulations (Yang et al., 2000). Some of
Levels the data, such as bumper, hood top and wind-screen
stiffness are obtained from subsystem tests according
Geometric and stiffness factors −1 0 +1 to the test procedures proposed by EEVC (1994), in-
BCH = bumper central height (mm) 300 400 500 cluding lower-leg impactor to bumper, and headform
BS = bumper stiffness (N/mm) 125 250 500 impactors to hood top tests. Hood edge stiffness is es-
BL = bumper lead (mm) 50 100 200 timated within the corridor reported by Ishikawa et al.
HEH = hood edge height (mm) 600 700 800 (1991). All these stiffness variables vary from 50% to
HES = hood edge stiffness (N/mm) 200 400 800
HL = hood length (mm) 500 700 1200
200% to simulate the different impact locations on ve-
HTS = hood top stiffness (N/mm) 75 150 300 hicle front structure.
HA = hood slope angle (deg) 10 25 45 Since the hood edge height and bumper center height
WA = windshield angle (deg) — 30 45 were recognized as two key factors affecting the pedes-
WS = windshield stiffness (N/mm) 300 600 800 trian overall kinematics and the injury severity to knee
joints, these two variables are varied in full factorial of
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force-deformation properties of vehicle structure will
be discussed at impact speed of 40 km/h.
The effect of impact speed is examined at four levels,
i.e. 20, 30, 40 and 50 km/h. The selected geometric and
stiffness variables and corresponding levels are listed in
Table I.
Bumper central height is chosen between knee joint
and the center of gravity of the lower leg for a 50th per-
centile adult male. The hood edge height varies between
hip and knee joints. The hood length has three levels in
order to simulate the different vehicle types, of which
1200 mm for large passenger car, 700 mm for compact
passenger car and 500 mm for van and light truck. Hood
slope angle also depends on the specific vehicle models.
For instance, hood slope angle at 10 degree is assigned
for passenger cars, whereas 30 degree for mini van and
45 degree for light truck. Likewise, windshield angle
is varied to fit the different vehicle models. In the case
of mini van and small passenger car, windshield angle
has two levels at 30 and 45 degree. For large passen-
ger car and light truck, the windshield angle is 30 and
45 degree respectively. By varying the bumper height,
bumper lead, hood edge height, hood length, hood slope
angle, and windshield angle, different vehicle models
and front shapes can be simulated (Figure 2).
The medium level of force-deformation properties
for different structures is consistent with the input data
three levels, which lead to 9 variations for both large
and compact passenger cars. Other variables vary in re-
verse levels for the large and compact passenger cars, so
that the corresponding effects can be obtained without
any confounding effects between these variables. The
geometric and stiffness variables for van and light truck
only vary in two levels due to the obvious higher and
stiffer front profile than that of passenger cars.
The influences of geometric variables of vehicle
fronts on pedestrian responses are evaluated with the
basic configuration of large passenger cars at the im-
pact speed of 40 km/h. The stiffness variables remain
constant at their middle levels as below,
• Bumper stiffness 250 N/mm
• Hood lead edge stiffness 400 N/mm
• Hood top stiffness 150 N/mm
• Windscreen stiffness 600 N/mm
Geometric variables, including the bumper center
height, bumper lead length, and hood edge height, vary
at three levels, which makes 27 runs in a full factorial
analysis.
Similarly, the effects of different stiffness variables
on pedestrian injuries are studied at the impact speed of
40 km/h with a fixed vehicle front shape as follow,
• Bumper center height 400 mm
• Bumper lead length 100 mm
• Hood lead edge height 700 mm
• Hood length 1200 mm
• Hood slope angle 10 degree
• Windscreen slope angle 30 degree

To avoid the interference of the windscreen to the

pedestrian kinematics, the hood length is chosen at the
upper level of 1200 mm. While the windscreen stiffness
remains constant, other three stiffness variables includ-
ing bumper stiffness, hood edge stiffness and hood top
Figure 2 Different vehicle types used in parametric study. stiffness are varied according to the three-level full
 INFLUENCES OF VEHICLE SPEED AND FRONT STRUCTURE 35

Table II Tolerance levels of selected injury parameters bending angle and 6 mm of knee lateral dislocation
serve as the knee joint tolerance levels.
Injury parameter Tolerance level

HIC 1000
Chest acc. (3 ms) 85 g RESULTS
Pelvis impact force 10 kN
Thigh impact force 5 kN Influence of Impact Speed
Tibia acc. (3 ms) 150 g
Knee lateral dislocation 6 mm
Knee lateral bending angle 15◦ Calculated injury parameters are presented in the cu-
mulative frequency of 25%, 50% and 75% to describe
the injury risks of pedestrians at different impact speeds
factorial design, leading to 27 runs totally. The effects (Figure 3). The effects of different vehicle types with
of specific variables and possible interactions on pedes- varying front shapes and compliance properties are
trian injury can be analyzed without any confounding included.
effects between these variables. The head injury (HIC value) increases steadily with
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the impact speed. The probability of the HIC value ex-

Selected Injury Parameters
The injury risks of pedestrian are evaluated in terms
of the selected injury parameters and tolerance levels
(Table II). HIC (Head Injury Criterion) of 1,000 is as-
signed to evaluate the resultant head injury severity,
while the TTI (Thoracic Trauma Index) of 85 g for
chest area. The impact force of 10 kN is chosen as the
injury tolerance level for pelvis side impact (Cesari &
Rameet, 1982). The injury criteria concerning lower
extremities are primarily based on the recent report by
EEVC (1998). The thigh impact force of 5 kN repre-
sents the 20% risk of an AIS2+ femur fracture, whereas
tibia acceleration of 150 g indicates 40% risk of an AIS
2 + lower leg fracture. A proposed 15 degree of lateral
ceeding 1,000 is more than 50% at the impact speed of
40 km/h, while less than 25% at 30 km/h (Figure 3a).
The injury risks of thigh and pelvis area exhibit a
strong dependency on the impact speed. For instance,
at the impact speed of 30 km/h, there are only less
than 25% of all cases exceeding the tolerance level of
5 kN, while around 75% are serious injured at the im-
pact speed of 40 km/h (Figure 3b). There is almost no
tibia bone fracture at the impact speed of 30 km/h, but
more than 75% at 40 km/h (Figure 3c). The knee joint
appears to be the most vulnerable area under the lateral
impact loading. Even at the impact speed of 20 km/h,
the injury risk of the knee joint is about 25%. As the
impact speed increases up to 40 km/h, the knee injury
risk reaches almost 50% (Figure 3d).

Figure 3 Injury risks at different impact speeds (a) HIC value, (b) thigh impact force, (c) tibia acceleration, (d) knee lateral dislocation.
 36 X. J. LIU ET AL.
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Figure 4 Effects of vehicle impact speed on pedestrian (a) head impact speed with large car, (b) head impact speed with compact car,
(c) head impact angle with large car, (d) head impact angle with compact car.

Figure 4 illustrates the dependency of head impact analysis involving both geometric and stiffness vari-
speed and angle on vehicle impact speed. The head im- ables are conducted to reveal the corresponded effects
pact speed means the value of head resultant velocity on the pedestrian injury severity.
prior to the impact event between the head and vehicle
structure. The head impact angle refers to the angle be-
tween the direction of the head impact speed and the Influence of Vehicle Types
ground reference level in downward and rearward di-
rection. These two items are the essential test conditions The resultant head velocities are significantly af-
for the head impactor to bonnet top test (EEVC, 1998). fected by the vehicle types (Figure 5). In case of the
It’s clearly that the head impact speed increases propor- light truck, the resultant head velocity approximately
tional with the vehicle impact speed. The ratio between remains constant during the first 50 ms after the initial
the head impact speed and vehicle travel speed varies impact, and then decreases sharply after the head impact
from 0.72 to 1.04 for the large passenger car, and 0.65 to with windshield structure at 10.0 m/s (55 ms), slightly
1.28 for the compact passenger car, which are approx-
imately consistent with the previous studies, 0.7–0.9
for the large passenger car (Pritz, 1983) and 1.1–1.4 for
the compact passenger car (Cavallero et al., 1983). The
head impact angle varies from 42 to 73 degree for the
large passenger car, and 24 to 74 degree for the compact
passenger car. However, EEVC (1998) only specified
the head impact speed of 40 km/h with 65◦ ± 2◦ to the
ground reference level as the test conditions for the head
impactor test.
The considerable variations in calculated injury pa-
rameters at a given impact speed imply that factors other
than impact speed are also important in determining the Figure 5 Resultant head velocity against different vehicle types
injury severity of pedestrians. Therefore, an intensive at 40 km/h.
 INFLUENCES OF VEHICLE SPEED AND FRONT STRUCTURE
lower than the travel speed of vehicle (11.11 m/s). For
the mini van and passenger cars, the resultant head ve-
locities increase progressively and reach the maximum
at around 13.1 and 13.9 m/s, respectively. The head im-
pact speed against vehicle structure varies from 10.8 m/s
(95 ms) for mini van, 13.1 m/s (105 ms) for compact
passenger car to 10.2 m/s (116 ms) for large passen-
ger car.
The differences in head velocity changes can be
mainly attributed to the different hood slope angles of
various vehicle types (Figure 2), which lead to different
kinematics of pedestrian after the initial contact with
bumper. Due to the large hood slope angle of the light
truck, the pelvis and chest contact with hood earlier
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than the mini van and passenger cars. Consequently the
pedestrian body has not been rotated but pushed for-
ward along the direction of vehicle travel speed. When
impacted by the mini van or passenger cars, the pedes-
trian body is rotated downwards to the hood top, leading
to a considerably rotational movement after the impact.
The resultant head velocities thus increase after the ini-
tial impact for both mini van and passenger cars. The
extent of this rotational movement differs with the slope
angle and length of hood. Compared to the large pas-
senger car, the moment of head impact is earlier for the
compact passenger car, which results in a higher head
impact speed accordingly.
Table III summarized the mean values of various in-
jury parameters at the impact speed of 40 km/h with
respect to different vehicle types. In the simulation with
the van and light truck models, the contact locations of
the pedestrian head are closed to the lower windshield
frame, where is stiffer than the center of windshield
and hood top. Therefore higher injury risk of head has
been found in terms of the HIC value. Moreover, a large
hood slope angle results in the direct blow on pedestrian
chest and pelvis area, the injury risk to these body parts
are higher than that of passenger cars with apparent
“slipping” movement along the hood top. The injury
risks to the lower extremity of different vehicle types
Table III Comparison of injury parameters with different
vehicle types at 40 km/h
Vehicle types
Injury parameters LPAa CPAa Van
HIC 890 514 1261
Chest acc. (3 ms-g) 24 27 45
Pelvis impact force (kN) 5 2.8 6.7
Thigh impact force (kN) 6.7 3.6 5.8
Knee lat. angle (deg) 25 12 20
Knee lat. dis. (mm) 5.1 8.6 5.0
a
LPA: large passenger car, CPA: compact passenger car.
37
are compared in terms of the thigh impact force and
knee joint injury risk. Generally, pedestrian is exposed
to higher injury risk to the upper body area against the
mini van and light truck, while the passenger cars are
more aggressive to the lower extremity. Similar results
have been found in pedestrian accidents (Mizuno &
Kajzer, 2000).
Influence of Vehicle Front Shape
To avoid the effects of the hood slope angle and hood
length on pedestrian kinematics, only large passenger
cars are considered to assess the influences of bumper
center height, bumper lead length and hood edge on
the head and lower extremity injuries. The hood edge
height has significant effect on the pedestrian kinemat-
ics and resultant head velocity. When the hood edge
height varies from 800 to 600 mm, the Wrap Around
Distance (WAD) increases from 1.78 m to 2.05 m, due
to the considerable “slipping” effect of pedestrian body
(Figure 6a). The head impact speed increases from 9.4
to 11.1 m/s (Figure 6b).
Compared to the effect of the hood edge height, the
influences of the bumper lead length and bumper height
on the resultant head velocity are slight. The apparent
effect of the bumper lead is to delay the time of the
head contact with hood top, and consequently increase
the WAD (Figure 6c). The effect of the bumper lead on
head impact velocity is slight (Figure 6d).
With the increasing bumper height close to the knee
joint, the head impact speed increases (Figure 6e). This
is mainly due to the large knee lateral deflection, which
restricts the “slipping” movement but intensifies the ro-
tation movement of upper body downwards to the hood
top.
The relative importance of these three factors is com-
pared within Figure 6 (e, f). It is clearly that the hood
edge height has greater effect than other two parame-
ters. No significant interaction exists between the hood
edge height and bumper center height.
In general, the head impact speed tends to increase
with a decreasing hood edge height, and an increasing
bumper center height, but has minor relationship to the
bumper lead length.
The influence of vehicle front shape on the dynamic
Trucks responses of knee joint is illustrated in Figure 7. When
1317
the bumper lead length varies from 50 to 100 mm, the
59 knee lateral dislocation ascends rapidly (Figure 7a),
7.3 while the knee lateral bending angle tends to decrease
6.2 as the bumper lead increases (Figure 7b). When the
20 bumper lead at 50 mm, the mean responses of the knee
5.0
lateral dislocation is always below the injury threshold
of 6 mm.
 38 X. J. LIU ET AL.
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Figure 6 Influences of vehicle front shape parameters on pedestrian kinematics and head responeses: hood-edge height on (a) kinematics
(b) head impact speed, bumper lead length on (c) kinematics (d) head impact speed. (e) interactions between bumper center height and bumper
lead length on head impact speed, (f ) interactions between hood edge height and bumper center height on head impact speed.

Figure 7 Influences of vehicle front shape on knee injuries (a) Interaction between bumper center height and bumper lead length on knee
lateral bending angle. (b) Interaction between bumper center height and bumper lead length on knee lateral bending angle.
 INFLUENCES OF VEHICLE SPEED AND FRONT STRUCTURE
The only detectable effect of the hood edge height
on the knee injury parameters is observed in case of
the bumper height at 300 mm. When the hood edge
height was raised from 600 to 800 mm, the knee lat-
eral dislocation increased from 4.6 to 5.4 mm, whereas
the knee lateral bending angle decreased from 6.2 to
3.6 degree. Meanwhile, no significant interaction exists
between the bumper center height and hood edge height
in terms of the knee injury parameters. Therefore, it can
be concluded that the hood edge height has little effect
on both knee lateral bending angle and lateral disloca-
tion. This result was consistent with the previous studies
conducted with mechanical substitutes (Ishikawa et al.,
1994; Sakurai et al., 1994) and mathematical simulation
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(Nagatomi et al., 1996).
Influence of Vehicle Stiffness Properties
In a similar way described above, the influence of
vehicle stiffness properties is analyzed with the pedes-
trian kinematics, resultant head velocity and injuries to
head and lower extremity regions.
Figure 8 illustrates the influence of the local stiffness
of contact area on the injury severity of different body
segments. The stiffness variables have significant ef-
fects on head and lower extremity injuries, with a given
Figure 8 Effects and interactions of vehicle front stiffness variables on pedestrian injuries: (a) Hood top stiffness—HIC; (b) Hood-edge
stiffness—Thigh impact force; (c) Bumper stiffness—Tibia acceleration; (d) Bumper stiffness—Knee lateral bending angle.
39
vehicle front shape and impact speed. A soft hood top
can provide a significant protection to the head area
(Figure 8a), compared with other two levels of hood top
stiffness. Similar tendency is also found in the thigh im-
pact force (Figure 8b), tibia acceleration (Figure 8c) and
knee joint injuries (Figure 8d). An exception is found
in the 3 ms clip of tibia acceleration. It’s mainly due to
the fact that an extremely high peak value of the tibia
acceleration causing tibia fracture has been filtered out.
Compared to the influences of vehicle shape vari-
ables, stiffness proprieties have great effect on the re-
sulted injury severity, but little influence on the pedes-
trian motion pattern.
DISCUSSION
Several studies investigated the likely effects of the
reduced vehicle travel speed limit on the incidence of
pedestrian fatalities, based on the observations from
real-world pedestrian accidents and statistical analyses.
If the speed limit reduced from 60 km/h to 50 km/h,
a reduction of pedestrian fatalities and casualties by
25% could be achieved (Walz et al., 1983; Fieldwick
& Brown, 1987; Anderson et al., 1997). A literature
review on vehicle travel speed and pedestrian injuries
summarized that only 5% of pedestrian would be killed
 40 X. J. LIU ET AL.
at the traveling speed of 32 km/h, while the death rate
would be up to 40%, 80% and 100% at the traveling
speed of 48, 64 and 90 km/h, respectively (Leaf &
Preusser, 1999). These results have proven the necessity
of reducing speed limit in urban area. However, vehi-
cle travel speed is usually higher than impact speed,
which is the major concern in crash safety research.
In this study, a reduction of 25% of severe injuries
(HIC > 1000) is found if the vehicle impact speed
changes from 40 to 30 km/h, which shows a reason-
able agreement with the previous studies.
The influences of vehicle front structures on pedes-
trian kinematics and injuries have been discussed in
many studies (Niederer & Schlumpf, 1984; Harris &
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 01:07 17 November 2014
Grew, 1985; Ishikawa et al., 1991). However, these stud-
ies were limited on the bonnet-type vehicle at a given
impact speed. The biofidelity of pedestrian substitutes
were limited, especially in lower extremities. The knee
joint injuries were often omitted. In this study, the in-
fluences of different vehicle are evaluated at the impact
speed from 20 to 50 km/h with the validated mathemat-
ical model (Yang et al., 2000). This validated model
can properly predict the overall kinematics, dynamic
responses of body segments, as well as the insight into
knee joint injuries.
There are several limitations of the present study.
First, the initial impact location is restricted at the cen-
tral line of vehicle model. Other accident situations are
not included. Second, the involvement of different vehi-
cle types is constant at different impact speeds, which
needs more detailed accident data to refine the simu-
lation matrix. Third, the adult model (Yang, 1997) was
well validated at the impact speeds of 25, 32 and 39 km/h
with two given vehicle models. However, the speed
in this study ranges from 20 to 50 km/h with wide
variations of vehicle models. This may result in
some inaccuracy of simulation results. Fourth, only the
50th percentile adult male is considered. Other body
sizes, like small female and children at different ages are
excluded.
In the future study, the most interest will focus on the
development of child pedestrian models at various ages
and the influences of car-front structures on the injury
risks of child pedestrians.
CONCLUSIONS
The validated pedestrian model based on human
body characteristics is an effective means to study the
complex collision event between vehicle structure and
human body. The results from this parametric study
indicate that the injury severity of pedestrian is signif-
icantly affected by the impact speed, and can be miti-
gated by altering vehicle front shape and the stiffness
properties of structures.
Impact speed has the critical effect on the pedestrian
injury severity. As the impact speed decreases from
40 to 30 km/h, the probability of severe head injury
(HIC > 1000) decreases from 50% to lower than 25%.
However the injury risks to knee joint remains above
50% at 30 km/h. Considering the possible improve-
ment of vehicle front structure to mitigate the injury
to the knee joint, a speed limit of 30 km/h in urban area
is feasible way to reduce the pedestrian injury risk.
As to the kinematics and resultant head velocity of
pedestrian struck by passenger cars, the hood edge height
has been identified as the dominant factor. The effect
of the bumper center height and bumper lead length
is slight. In general, the head impact speed decreases
with a raising hood edge height and a lowering bumper
center height. The injury severity to the knee joint is
mainly influenced by the bumper central height and
stiffness properties. The bumper lead and hood edge
height only has slight effect on the lateral bending an-
gle of knee.
The local stiffness of head contact area strongly con-
trols the resulted injury severity of head. The influ-
ence of the force-deformation properties of bumper and
hood edge on the pedestrian kinematics and head im-
pact speed is slight, but significant on the resulted injury
severity to the involved body segments.
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