Occupant Injuries and Roof Strength in Rollover Crashes
Keyword(s):
The Road
◽
This paper shows how a mathematical relationship can be derived linking serious neck injuries to excessive roof deformation and that this relationship depends on the vehicle’s Centre of Gravity (COG) lateral velocity at the moment of touchdown of the vehicle’s roof structure. The relationships have been greatly simplified for an idealized condition to facilitate derivation of the equations. In the case of a very strong roof, occupant neck loading resulting from torso augmentation reaches a threshold value that depends on the coefficient of friction between the road surface and the vehicle’s steel body or tires and the height the vehicle’s COG drops during a quarter turn impact sequence.