Abdominal Finite Element Model for Traffic Accidents Injury Analysis

The abdominal cavity is a vulnerable region of the human body. The severe and critical abdominal injuries arising during traffic accidents are the second most important bodily injuries after thoracic injuries. The injuries are predominantly caused by contact with the lap belt, steering wheel, armrest, dashboard, side door, etc. However in terms of investigating the biomechanical response of the abdomen, experimental studies have turned out to be particularly difficult to perform and the results obtained are not easy to interpret. Therefore attention should be paid to a generation of more realistic human body models with detailed inner organ models in order to be able to describe the organ injury mechanisms during accidents. In this study the abdominal finite element (FE) model was created to improve the abdominal part of the human body model ROBBY. This should ensure the ability of an updated model ROBBY to predict the abdominal injury during various impact conditions. The abdominal model geometry was created on the basis of real anatomical human data. Tissue characteristics completing the organ geometry were obtained from public sources. The created abdominal model was consequently scaled and embedded into the ROBBY model representing a 50th percentile male. The updated ROBBY model was validated with a comparison of the simulation results during abdominal oblique impactor tests and abdominal frontal rigid bar tests with available cadaver experimental results. It was found that the updated ROBBY model with the new deformable abdominal model is able to predict the response of the human abdomen during various impact conditions very well. Moreover due to the precision of the abdominal model the injury of individual abdominal organs can be predicted during impact. This allows the simulation of real vehicle accidents and the assessment of human abdomen injuries arising during accident to be performed.