Under Body Blast Injury Assessment
Abstract
This 1-year effort supports research to enable the Live-Fire Test and Evaluation (LFT&E) community to conduct realistic survivability testing of ground-combat vehicles subjected to underbody blast (UBB) threats, with a primary emphasis on assessing potential occupant casualties, as well as to enable the development and testing of improved occupant protection systems. UBB creates injurious forces on occupants of ground-combat vehicles that are more violent and that act in directions not normally encountered in civilian automotive accidents. Injury prediction tools that were developed to assess occupant safety in automobile crashes are not adequate for assessing occupant survivability in ground-combat vehicles exposed to UBB threats. Accurately predicting the spectrum of injuries caused by UBB forces in live-fire tests of ground-combat vehicles presents a unique challenge for the Department of Defense (DoD). A UBB medical research program is being initiated to understand the human tolerance limits and injury mechanisms needed to accurately predict injuries to ground-combat vehicle occupants caused by UBB events.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Accomplishment
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2014
- Source ID
- a088d09382ffedf7e1f98f546bc047db