FE Human Modelling in Crash – Aspects of the numerical Modelling and current Applications in the Automotive Industry

Human modelling is a rather new development in occupant and pedestrian safety simulations in the automotive industry and gained much importance and interest in recent years. However it is still in a very early development phase and the model development and validation is still under heavy development. The general intention of these models is to incorporate the biomechanical aspect into pedestrian and occupant safety simulations and to enhance the significance of conventional dummy models. Especially the prediction of injuries in a crash situation is a very important task. This contribution will introduce the particular human model THUMS (Total HUman Model for Safety) and focus on some numerical and algorithmical aspects, important for a successful use of the model in automotive crash simulations. Finally, some examples using the occupant and pedestrian version of the THUMS model will be presented and discussed.