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A Smarter Dummy
Wake Forest medical school working on advanced technology used in vehicle-safety research
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Published: November 2, 2008
Wake Forest University School of Medicine is searching for six real-life, wreck-test dummies.
Researchers are not planning to substitute local residents' flesh and blood for the dummies' plastic limbs and metal rods, but they do want real people to serve as body doubles for computer models to better measure the injuries to bones, muscles, organs and tendons caused by automobile wrecks.
The computer images are being designed for the Global Human Body Models Consortium.
The goal of the consortium is to improve vehicle safety for drivers and passengers according to their specific height, weight, size, shape and age. The members are Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Honda R&D Co., Hyundai Motor Co., Nissan Motor Corp. Ltd., PSA Peugeot-Citroën, Renault s.a.s., Takata Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and TRW Automotive.
A particular focus of the researchers will be on better predicting the effect of different degrees of force and locations of impact on the body during a vehicle wreck than they have been able to do with traditional crash-test dummies.
"This effort has the real potential to reduce injuries and save lives in car crashes," said Joel Stitzel, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and technical director of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University Center for Injury Biomechanics.
The Wake Forest researchers were chosen to oversee the integration center of the project, with Stitzel serving as the lead investigator. The computer models are expected to be ready for use in 2011.
For men, the three body types being sought are: 5-foot-4-inches tall, 127 pounds and a body-mass index of 21.81; 5-foot-9, 172 pounds and a 25.40 body-mass index; and 6-foot-2, 223 pounds and a 28.63 body-mass index.
For women, the three body types are: 4-foot-11-inches tall, 108 pounds and a body-mass index of 21.81; 5-foot-4, 137 pounds and a 23.51 body-mass index; and 5-foot-8, 188 pounds and a 28.63 body-mass index.
"We will scan their bodies through an MRI to generate the computer models," said Scott Gayzik, the lead Wake Forest engineer for the project. "
"This is a game changer," said J.T. Wang, who is the chairman of the technical committee of the consortium. "The ability to directly assess wreck-induced injuries at the tissue and bone levels will fundamentally improve the safety design of vehicles."
The need for improved motor-vehicle design and construction grows even as the number of fatalities from motor-vehicle wrecks has decreased slightly in recent years.
According to the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System, there were 37,248 fatalities from motor-vehicle wrecks in 2007, down 4 percent from 38,648 in 2006, and down 5 percent from the recent high of 39,252 in 2005.
The Institute of Transportation Engineers estimated that there have been more than 36,000 fatalities from motor-vehicle wrecks nationwide through Friday.
The Wake Forest researchers cited data that last year, 1,559 North Carolinians died of injuries received in a motor-vehicle wreck, up 1 percent from 2006.
Drivers represented 58 percent of the motor-vehicle fatalities in the United States in 2007, while passengers represented 23 percent. Motorcyclists, pedestrians and bicyclists represent the bulk of the other fatalities.
The Wake Forest researchers said that about 2.5 million Americans are injured in car wrecks annually. The total economic impact for reported and unreported wrecks is estimated at $230 billion.
The consortium has selected six university and research teams from across the world to collaborate on the project, including centers that will concentrate on models of specific regions of the body.
"The manufacturers and suppliers had been doing some computer modeling on their own," Stitzel said. "In 2006, they decided to combine their efforts to create a world standard model of the human for injury prediction.
"Our job is to make sure all the regions of the body work together to approximate a total human, responding as a human being would in common crash scenarios."
According to the consortium, the images from the computer models being developed would contain as many as 3 million dots, or finite elements. That's compared with 120,000 dots now.
The consortium has planned three phases for the program. The first involves the six body images currently being researched with a goal of the computer models being ready for use in March 2011. The companies have dedicated a combined $18 million to the initial phase.
The second phase targets computer images of adults of any age, body, shape and size. The third phase would focus on computer models of children.
"Ultimately, we want to be able to tailor these models to better predict injury in certain groups," Gayzik said. "For instance, current crash-test dummies tell us little about how injuries will affect the elderly."
Stitzel said that the research has the potential "to lead to different safety systems and improved customization of safety systems for vehicle occupants."
According to national transportation figures, about 110 to 115 Americans die every day of injuries received in a motor-vehicle wreck.
"That's the equivalent to a passenger jet a day going down with no survivors," Stitzel said. "These types of numbers would stop air travel in its tracks after a week, yet as a nation we tolerate the numbers because they are so diffuse and spread out through the country.
"We cannot stop every vehicle crash or prevent every fatality, but this is a step in the right direction," Stitzel said.
■ Richard Craver can be reached at 727-7376 or at rcraver@wsjournal.com.
Safety consortium
• FOUNDED: April 2006
• INDUSTRY PARTICIPANTS: Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Honda R&D Co., Hyundai Motor Co., Nissan Motor Corp. Ltd., PSA Peugeot-Citroën, Renault s.a.s., Takata Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and TRW Automotive.
• UNIVERSITY PARTICIPANTS:
Head and brain: Wayne State University (Michigan).
Neck: University of Waterloo (Ontario).
Thorax and upper extremities: University of Virginia, Center European and Analysis Safety Studies (CEESAR, in France), and the University of Waterloo.
Abdomen: The French National Institute for Transportation and Safety Research (INRETS, in France) and Virginia Tech.
Lower extremities and pelvis: University of Virginia, University of Alabama in Birmingham and India Institute of Technology (Delhi, India).
Integration center: Wake Forest University, Virginia Tech, Hongik University (South Korea) and University of Michigan.
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