Abstract
Recently, the amount of traffic accidents involving elderlies has increased considerably. Due to that, further analysis is required, and anthropometric dummy testing would be too time and resource consuming. This research focus is to study and evaluate, through the use of HIC (Head Injury Criterion), the outcome of accidents involving a car and elderlies riding bicycles. The core of this research lies within MADYMO simulation software. The simulation itself utilizes three bodies that are: A frontal part of a car, an elderly male or female and a bicycle, previously validated in other research. A simplified typical sedan model, which consists of a frontal hood, bumpers and windshield, is set at default speeds of 10, 20, 30 and 40 kilometers per hour, respectively. In addition to that, the situations in which braking at maximum capability is considered have also been conducted to evaluate the efficiency of breaking for injury prevention. The elderly cyclist models have been developed scaling down from AM50. The bicycle-elderly impact configuration is set in different situations: Frontal, sideways and back collision. Also, the situation where the cyclist also has its own speed has been taking into account, for proper comparisons. The expected results are: To see a decrease in HIC when the car is under maximum braking situation, and higher HIC accordingly to the Sedan speed. The extra goals are to study at what speed braking becomes most efficient in preventing head injury to the cyclist and comparing the difference in HIC depending on cyclist positioning and speed.
