WP1 – Real-world data
In WP1 crash pulse recorder data will form the understanding of the loading pattern that corresponds to injurious and non-injurious cases for females and males. These data will provide input to all other WPs in the ADSEAT project. A literature review on male and female WAD risk and injury criteria will also be performed. In addition, the WAD protection potential due to improved car seats and improved crash-pulses for various seat and car design will be assessed from accident data. Furthermore, identification of potential benefit for EU 25 countries will be carried out.
The results of WP1 will feed into the other work packages as follows. By the identification of crash pulse characteristics with injury risk, the limits of non-injurious pulses for volunteers can be assessed for WP2. The crash pulse characteristics will be the input to the computational simulations (WP3) of different loading situations in order to establish which injury criteria (WP4) correspond to differences in injury risk.
By using real world data in computational simulations, guidance with respect to how the female model should be designed (WP 3) will be generated. The link to WP 5 is established by identifying how well various anti-whiplash systems protect females and males, thus forming the knowledge basis for improved seat design.
Update, Aug 2011
An extensive literature review and analysis of databases was carried out. The result showed that weight and height close to the 50th percentile female is appropriate for a dummy model representing females. Analysis of insurance data indicates that the average weight and height for females reporting whiplash injuries correspond quite well with the average sized female among European countries. The review on injury criteria shows that there are no gender specific injury criteria. No methods are validated to adequately scale proposed threshold values of postulated injury criteria.
Real world data analysis carried out shows that existing whiplash protection concepts are more effective for males than for females, with a 45% risk reduction in permanent medial impairment for females and 60% for males. This analysis was published by Kullgren and Krafft, IRCOBI 2010.
