Pedestrian leg injuries and front-end vehicles design

The work aims to investigate the influence of some passenger vehicle front‐end design parameters on the behavior and damage occurring in the human lower limbs while impacted in an accident. The analysis is carried out by means of the Lower Limbs Model for Safety (LLMS) for the purpose of pedestrian safety. Considering the pedestrian standardized impact procedure (as in the 2003/12/EC) a design of experiment plan considering various material properties, bumper thickness, position of the higher and lower bumper beams and the position of pedestrian, was performed in order to identify how such vehicles parameters could influence injury occurrence. The injury prediction was derived from knee lateral flexion and lateral shearing, ligaments elongation, stress in bone structure. The work helps to highlight the most influencing parameters that have to be considered in the optimization of a vehicle front‐end to improve its behavior in the impact against a pedestrian by reducing its aggressiveness.