Development of Injury Thresholds Pertaining to Under-Body Blasts
Abstract
Severe injuries are being reported from occupants of MRAP and other vehicles exposed to under-body blasts. Both the etiology of these injuries and an effective means to mitigate these injuries are not currently known or understood, although whole body accelerations and at least some limited seat-pan and toe-pan intrusions are expected. Furthermore, live-fire testing with the Hybrid-III instrumented crash test dummy has resulted in sensor data that is difficult to interpret due to the lack of this dummy's biofidelity in the blast range of loadings. This proposal teams the University of Virginia Center for Applied Biomechanics (UVA-CAB) with collaborators at the U.S. Army Aeromedical Laboratory (USAARL) to develop new, blast rate injury criteria applicable to those injuries typically seen in theater resulting from under-body blasts to vehicle occupants. These criteria will be used to develop injury criteria for the WIAMan blast test dummy, so that competing vehicle designs, interior injury mitigation strategies, and personal protective equipment can be evaluated using this test dummy. Preliminary testing of Hybrid-III has begun for comparison to live-fire and GenHull2 Hybrid-III response. Initial results show that the UVA ODYSSEY blast simulator represents well the UBB environment, and is sufficient for WIAMan development work.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 2013
- Accession Number
- AD1056249
Entities
People
- Robert S. Salzar
Organizations
- University of Virginia