Development and validation of a pedestrian deformable finite element model

Pedestrian protection has become an increasingly important consideration in vehicle crash safety. Pedestrian-vehicle crashes cause a significant number of pedestrian fatalities and injuries globally. Computer models are powerful tools for understanding how to reduce the severity of injuries in such crashes. Real-world studies of pedestrians provide an important source of information for evaluating pedestrian model dynamic performance and ability to reconstruct injury-causing events. This study describes the validation process of deformable pedestrian model using published postmortem human subject (PMHS) trajectory and head resultant velocity corridors, and demonstrates its applicability to pedestrian — vehicle impact research. We implemented the deformable pedestrian model using LS-DYNA finite element code. Based on PMHS data, the pedestrian model is used to validate the displacement trajectories of the head, pelvis, knee and foot. The finite element pedestrian model thus obtained can help assess the friendliness of vehicles with pedestrians in traffic crashes and assist in the future development of pedestrian safety technologies.