title: The influence of gait stance on pedestrian lower limb injury risk.
abstract: The effect of pedestrian gait on lower limb kinematics and injuries has not been analyzed. The purpose of this paper was therefore to investigate the effect of pedestrian gait on kinematics and injury risk to the lower limbs using the Total Human Model for Safety adult male pedestrian model together with FE models of vehicle front structures. The modeling results indicate that the tibia and femur cortical bone von-Mises stress and the lateral knee bending angle of an adult pedestrian are strongly dependent on the gait stance when struck by both a sedan car and an SUV at 40km/h. The gait analysis shows that generally the leg of an adult pedestrian has lower injury risk when the knee is flexed and linear regressions show high negative correlation between knee flexion angle during impact and knee lateral bending angle and also high negative correlation between lower leg axial rotation during impact and knee lateral bending angle. Furthermore, in some gait stances a self-contact between the legs occurs, and the peak bones stresses and knee shearing displacement in the leg are then increased. Assessment of pedestrian lower limb injury should take account of these gait stance effects.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Bioengineering, Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; Research Centre of Vehicle and Traffic Safety, State Key Lab of Advanced Design and Manufacturing for Vehicle Body, Hunan University, China.
authors.forename: Guibing
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Research Centre of Vehicle and Traffic Safety, State Key Lab of Advanced Design and Manufacturing for Vehicle Body, Hunan University, China; Vehicle Safety Division, Department of Applied Mechanics, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.
authors.forename: Jikuang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Centre for Bioengineering, Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Electronic address: csimms@tcd.ie.
authors.forename: Ciaran
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Simms
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000328:Adult; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D005269:Femur; D005684:Gait; D006801:Humans; D007719:Knee Joint; D007869:Leg Injuries / Q000517:prevention & control; D008297:Male; D000069636:Pedestrians / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016059:Range of Motion, Articular; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013977:Tibia; D016138:Walking / Q000293:injuries* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
keywords: FE models; Lower limb injuries; Pedestrian gait stance