Optimization of Female Head–Neck Model with Active Reflexive Cervical Muscles in Low Severity Rear Impact Collisions
Journal article, 2021

ViVA Open Human Body Model (HBM) is an open-source human body model that was developed to fill the gap of currently available models that lacked the average female size. In this study, the head–neck model of ViVA OpenHBM was further developed by adding active muscle controllers for the cervical muscles to represent the human neck muscle reflex system as studies have shown that cervical muscles influence head–neck kinematics during impacts. The muscle controller was calibrated by conducting optimizationbased parameter identification of published-volunteer data. The effects of different calibration objectives to head–neck kinematics were analyzed and compared. In general, a model with active neck muscles improved the head–neck kinematics agreement with volunteer responses. The current study highlights the importance of including active muscle response to mimic the volunteer’s kinematics. A simple PD controller has found to be able to represent the behavior of the neck muscle reflex system. The optimum gains that defined the muscle controllers in the present study were able to be identified using optimizations. The present study provides a basis for describing an active muscle controller that can be used in future studies to investigate whiplash injuries in rear impacts.

Whiplash

Finite element

Rear impact

Neck muscle reflex

Human body model

Author

I Putu Alit Putra

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Vehicle Safety

Johan Iraeus

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Vehicle Safety

Fusako Sato Sakayachi

Japan Automobile Research Institute

Mats Svensson

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Vehicle Safety

Astrid Linder

The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI)

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Vehicle Safety

Robert Thomson

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Vehicle Safety

Annals of Biomedical Engineering

0090-6964 (ISSN) 15739686 (eISSN)

Vol. 49 1 115-128

Virtual Vehicle Safety Assessment Step 2: Open Source Human Body Models and Crash Testing (Viva II)

VINNOVA (2016-03353), 2017-01-01 -- 2019-06-30.

Open Access Virtual Testing Protocols for Enhanced Road User Safety (VIRTUAL)

European Commission (EC) (EC/H2020/768960), 2018-06-01 -- 2022-05-31.

Subject Categories

Mechanical Engineering

Other Medical and Health Sciences

Areas of Advance

Transport

Infrastructure

C3SE (Chalmers Centre for Computational Science and Engineering)

DOI

10.1007/s10439-020-02512-1

PubMed

32333133

More information

Latest update

2/25/2022