PIPER

In passive safety, advanced Human Body Models (HBM) for injury prediction based on the Finite Elements (FE) method have the potential to represent the population variability and to provide more accurate injury predictions than alternatives using global injury criteria.

However, these advanced HBM are underutilized in industrial research and development (R&D). Reasons include difficulties to position the models – which are typically only available in one posture – in actual vehicle environments, and the lack of model families to represent the population variability.

The main objective of the PIPER project will be to develop new tools to position and personalize these advanced HBM. By facilitating the generation of population and subject-specific HBM and their usage in production environments, the tools will enable new applications in industrial R&D for the design of restraint systems as well as new research applications.

The main focus for KTH - Neuronic Engineering - will be the integration of improved head and neck segments in order to obtain full body models for 3 and 6 years old children. The evolutions of material and local geometrical parameters as a function of age (or other global metric) will also be accessed using literature surveys.

This project is funded by the European Commission within the FP7 program. It is coordinated by the University of Lyon and gathers ten partners from five countries during three and a half year starting from November 1^st 2013. The total budget of the project amounts 3,8 million euros for an EC funding of 2,9 million euros.