title: Head impact mechanisms of a child occupant seated in a child restraint system as determined by impact testing.
abstract: In side collision accidents, the head is the most frequently injured body region for child occupants seated in a  child restraint system (CRS). Accident analyses show that a child's head can move out of the CRS shell, make hard contact with  the vehicle interior, and thus sustain serious injuries. In order to improve child head protection in side collisions, it is necessary to  understand the injury mechanism of a child in the CRS whose head makes contact with the vehicle interior. In this research, an  SUV-to-car oblique side crash test was conducted to reconstruct such head contacts. A Q3s child dummy was seated in a CRS in  the rear seat of the target car. The Q3s child dummy's head moved out beyond the CRS side wing, moved laterally, and made  contact with the side window glass and the doorsill. It was demonstrated that the hard head contact, which produced a high HIC  value, could occur in side collisions. A series of sled tests was carried out to reproduce the dummy kinematic behavior observed  in the SUV-to-car crash test, and the sled test conditions such as sled angle, ECE seat slant angle and velocity-time history that  duplicated the kinematic behavior were determined. A parametric study also was conducted with the sled tests; and it was found  that the impact angle, harness slack, chest clip, and the CRS side wing shape affected the torso motion and head contact with the  vehicle interior.
authors.affiliation: Takata Corporation, Shiga, Japan. ryoichi.yoshida@takata.co.jp
authors.forename: Ryoichi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yoshida
authors.forename: Hiroshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Okada
authors.forename: Mitsunori
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nomura
authors.forename: Koji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mizuno
authors.forename: Yoshinori
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.forename: Naruyuki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hosokawa
mesh_terms: D000054:Acceleration; D000063:Accidents, Traffic; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D002648:Child; D057207:Child Restraint Systems; D006259:Craniocerebral Trauma / Q000517:prevention & control*; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D008348:Manikins