Study of the possible relationships between tramway front-end geometry and pedestrian injury risk

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this article is to report on the possible relationships between tramway front-end geometry and pedestrian injury risk over a wide range of possible tramway shapes. METHODS: To study the effect of tramway front-end shape on pedestrian injury metrics, accidents were simulated using a custom parameterized model of tramway front-end and pedestrian models available with the MADYMO multibody solver. The approach was automated, allowing the systematic exploration of tramway shapes in conjunction with 4 pedestrian sizes (e.g., 50th percentile male or M50). RESULTS: A total of 8,840 simulations were run, showing that the injury risk is more important for the head than for other body regions (thorax and lower extremities). The head of the M50 impacted the windshield of the tramway in most of the configurations. Two antagonist mechanisms affecting impact velocity of the head and corresponding head injury criterion (HIC) values were observed. The first is a trunk rotation resulting from an engagement of the lower body that can contribute to an increase in head velocity in the direction of the tram. The second is the loading of the shoulder, which can accelerate the upper trunk and head away from the windshield, resulting in lower impact velocities. Groups of design were defined based on 2 main parameters (windshield height and offset), some of which seem more beneficial than others for tramway design. The pedestrian size and tramway velocity (30 vs. 20?km/h) also affected the results. CONCLUSIONS: When considering only the front-end shape, the best strategy to limit the risk of head injury due to contact with the stiff windshield seems to be to promote the mechanism involving shoulder loading. Because body regions engaged vary with the pedestrian size, none of the groups of designs performed equally well for all pedestrian sizes. The best compromise is achieved with a combination of a large windscreen offset and a high windscreen. Conversely, particularly unfavorable configurations are observed for low windshield heights, especially with a large offset. Beyond the front-end shape, considering the stiffness of the current windshields and the high injury risks predicted for 30?km/h, the stiffness of the windshield should be considered in the future for further gains in pedestrian safety

Drone impact on human beings : Experimental investigation with sUAS

International audienceBeyond some application related to military and civilian operations [1], the major part of the financial market is related to the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) by casual customers without specific training. This requires to solve a technological and legislative challenge to ensure the safety of the population regarding the use of an aeronautical system potentially near buildings and apt to fall over people on ground. For almost 10 years and even more recently, regulatory institutions at the global scale have performed a significant work to classify UAS regarding their lethal potential in a case of an impact with people on the ground [2, 3, 4, 5]. Nevertheless, the establishment of a consensus remains a challenging task given the lack of specific and exploitable experimental data on the problematic. Hence, the purpose of the study is twofold. It first aims at providing qualitative findings on the legal and scientific framework regarding the assessment of lethal injury thresholds related to UAS impacts on human-beings. Based on this framework, the study then relies on an experimental investigation. A dedicated protocol is developed in order to minimize the sources of discrepancy previously identified and in order to conduct representative impact test cases using commercially-availables UAS. The range of drones masses considered in this study is about 900 grams with respect to the open category defined by EASA

Repeatability of a protocol to evaluate the effect of storage on the mechanical properties of the kidney in-vitro

International audienceIn biomechanical testing protocols of soft tissue, specimens may have to undergo freezing or other conservation methods, which could affect their mechanical properties. In order to evaluate the effects of conservation techniques, an experimental protocol based on shear wave elastography - which provides an assessment of shear modulus (μ) was developed and applied to porcine kidneys. First, the organ is pinned onto a polystyrene plate. Then the plate then used to position the organ with respect to an ultrasound probe. This study provides an estimation of the repeatability of μ after repositioning a single kidney, and evaluates the effects of storing 8 fresh kidneys at room temperature for two days. μ were computed rectangular windows centred on the image and moving along the organ depth. When repositioning the organ, μ was more repeatable in the cortex near the capsule than in the central regions of the organ. These regions were also more inhomogeneous and imaging was not always possible due to ultrasound penetration issues. The cortex near the capsule was softer than the central regions including pyramids (e.g. 6.1±2.4kPa at 10% depth vs. 9.3±3.5kPa at 30% depth, n=8). Storage for two days had no significant effect on these values (p>0.25)

Development of an Open Source Framework to position and personalize Human Body Models

International audienceThe current manuscript reports on the development status of a software framework to scale (personalize) and position Human Body Models used in safety applications, i.e. the PIPER framework. The framework is both model and code agnostic and it was successfully used with Thums, GHBMC and the new PIPER scalable child model. Various transformation methods to scale or positioning were implemented in an interactive application. The software was released under the Open Source General Public License (GPL) version 2

Carta de una amiga á Maria Victoria Enriqueta, duquesa de Aota, reina electa de España

International audienceSpecifications of a Software Framework to Position and Personalise Human Body Model

D3.8 Final version of the personalization and positioning software tool with documentation. PIPER EU Project

The aim of this report is to provide an overview of the final version of the PIPER framework and application. The software, along with its documentation, and not the report, constitutes the main part of the deliverable. The software and documentation were already distributed at the Final Workshop and online (under the Open Source license GPLv2 or later for the software, and the GNU FDL 1.3 license for the documentation). The documentation includes detailed descriptions of the framework principles, user interface, metadata, along with the modules and their parameters. It also includes application scenarios (called workflows). Information about the use of the modules is complemented by Tutorials that were developed as part of WP1 (online on the wiki) and explanatory videos were developed as part of WP4 (videos of the final workshop, now available on YouTube). The headers in the source code files (also available online) list the main contributors to the software. The report will therefore not provide details about information that is already available elsewhere but will only provide a very brief summary of the functionalities available. Some of the descriptions are excerpts of the manual

Directorium divini cultus ad Cathedralis Ecclesiae Minoriccensis : eiusque Dioecesis usum

Fecha de imprenta tomada del título

Modelling hollow organs for impact conditions: a simplified case study

This study compares the performances of three numerical approaches (Lagrangian, ALE and control volume) for modelling the response of a short cylindrical pipe representing a portion of the intestines subjected to large and rapid compressions. While not being able to simulate sustained fluid flow, the Lagrangian approach provided similar results as the ALE for moderate levels of compression. However, it was the stiffest approach for larger levels, and had numerical issues for extreme compressions. While the ALE did not have these issues, its computing cost was very high, which would be problematic for large models. The control volume approach had the lowest computing cost and seemed promising for larger compressions. However, its response was the softest and further investigations are needed to define its dependency to modelling parameters

Child abdominal injuries in car restraint systems - An intra-abdominal pressure sensor for the Q-dummy family and proposed viscous injury criterion based on detailed accident analysis and their reconstructions

The 5th World Congress of Biomechanics, MUNICH, ALLEMAGNE, 29-/07/2006 - 04/08/200