Injury Potential From Lateral Crash Loading of Shoulder Harnesses

A leading cause of injury to occupants of military vehicles, particularly ground vehicles, is body impact to interior components of the vehicle. This SBIR 1 will evaluate existing injury data to determine injury modes and mechanisms that exist. Injurydata will be comprised of a combination of U.S. Army database data and publicaly available crash data. The available literature and existing countermeasures will be reviewed and application to Army vehicles will be explored. Trade studies, in conjunctionwith simulations from a validated computer occupant motion simulator, will be used to isolate the most likely 2 or 3 countermeasures. These countermeasures will then be tested in a series of horizontal accelerator tests utilized Anthropometric TestDevices (ATD) to acquire various injury data. The potential benefits are the installation and use of a seat belt system that is familiar to all adult users in the U.S. that will minimize and prevent many of the injurious contacts that occur in Army andcivilian vehicles when they are exposed to crash events that contain lateral accelerations. This benefit will be realized with minimal weight and cost penalty and little or no adverse mission impacts. The benefits will be also be realized across adiverse range of vehicle types including light, medium and heavy ground trucks as well as aircraft.