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Towards Occupant Protections for Both Men and Women

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Advances in Additive Manufacturing, Modeling Systems and 3D Prototyping (AHFE 2019)

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Abstract

The susceptibility of female occupants to Whiplash Associated Disorders (WADs) has been the focus over the past decades. To improve occupant protections, it is required to understand how gender differences affect the WAD injury mechanisms. The purpose of this study is to investigate the potential impact of the whole spinal alignment on the cervical vertebral kinematics and ligament elongation during a rear impact by analysing rear impact reconstruction simulations. The simulations demonstrated a potential impact of gender differences in whole spinal alignment on cervical vertebral kinematics and ligament elongations. It seems that the average female spinal alignment may expose women to larger deformation of the cervical soft tissues considered related to WAD, due to greater cervical vertebral kinematics, compared to the average male spinal alignment. The findings highlight the importance of the whole spinal alignment when developing female models to evaluate WAD countermeasures, and may thus improve occupant protection for women as well as men.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI, Grant Number JP 16KK0137.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Japan Automobile Research Institute, Karima 2530, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0822, Japan

    Fusako Sato

  2. Chalmers University of Technology, SE 412 96, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Fusako Sato, Karin Brolin, Mats Svensson & Astrid Linder

  3. Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, 8072, SE 402 78, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Astrid Linder

Authors
  1. Fusako Sato
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  2. Karin Brolin
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  3. Mats Svensson
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  4. Astrid Linder
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Correspondence to Fusako Sato .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Architecture Department, University of Chieti-Pescara, Pescara, Pescara, Italy

    Massimo Di Nicolantonio

  2. Emilio Rossi Design Consulting, Ortona, Chieti, Italy

    Emilio Rossi

  3. Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Thomas Alexander

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Sato, F., Brolin, K., Svensson, M., Linder, A. (2020). Towards Occupant Protections for Both Men and Women. In: Di Nicolantonio, M., Rossi, E., Alexander, T. (eds) Advances in Additive Manufacturing, Modeling Systems and 3D Prototyping. AHFE 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 975. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20216-3_56

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20216-3_56

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