Research - Anti Whiplash Seat

Gaurav Nilakantan

Research—Anti Whiplash Seat

Whiplash injuries of the neck are one of the most common injuries that occur during automobile rear collision. Current estimates in the USA are that the cost of this problem, both in dollars spent for medical care and disability, and in terms of human suffering, is in excess of $19 billion annually. This can be minimized with crash prevention strategies and improvements in vehicle safety design, especially with more effective seat back and head restraint systems.

This study aims at the design and numerical testing of a radical, cost-effective anti-whiplash seat with an active headrest mechanism which will effectively reduce or eliminate whiplash related injuries. The cost of conducting live crash tests with full scale vehicles and dummy occupants is enormously high. Finite element simulations are well suited for such studies.

The non-linear explicit dynamic analysis software LS-DYNA is used to perform the numerical simulations. Numerical dummies such as the HYBRID III are used to model the human occupant. Data such as head and neck accelerations, head to headrest contact force, and torso to seatback contact force, are extracted from the simulations and used to assess injury. Further design optimizations and running of simulations follow until the whiplash induced injuries are minimized.

(I currently have a patent on an anti-whiplash seat mechanism with an active head restraint. Please contact me, or the Office of Intellectual Property and Research at the University of Delaware, if you are interested in finding out more, or to leverage this new technology)