Injury criteria for vehicles safety assessment: a review with a focus using Human Body Models

This paper aims at providing an overview of the most used injury criteria (IC) and injury metrics for the study of the passive safety of vehicles. In particular, the work is focused on the injury criteria that can be adopted when finite element simulations and Human Body Models (HBMs) are used. The HBMs will result a fundamental instrument studying the occupant’s safety of the Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), since they allow to analyze a larger variety of configurations compared to the limitations related to the traditional experimental dummies. In this work, the most relevant IC are reported and classified basing on the body segments. In particular, the head, the torso, the spine, the internal organs, and the lower limbs are here considered. The applicability of the injury metrics to the analyses carried out with the HBMs is also discussed. The paper offers a global overview on the injury assessment useful to choose the injury criteria for the study of the vehicle passive safety. To this aim, tables resuming the presented criteria are also reported to provide the available metrics for the considered body damage.