SCALING OF ADULT TO CHILD RESPONSES APPLIED TO THE THORAX

The TNO Crash-Safety Research Centre started a research programme to establish sets of requirements for basic child dummy design characteristics. However, there is only very limited data available on child reponses to impact loading and therefore, most of the response corridors were obtained by scaling the response of adults. In previous studies, the "Kroell thoracic response corridors" were scaled on the basis of the masses and the rib cage stiffness only. Scaling by this method assumes that the corridor shape is similar and, therefore, implicitly assumes that the thoracic damping of adults is equivalent to that of children. In this paper a general scaling method is presented and applied to Lobdell's mathematical thoracic response model to predict the thoracic response of children. (A) For the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD 881069.