Biomechanical analysis of padding in child seats and head injury

Head injury is a common finding for infants and young children involved in automobile accidents. Although the child restraint seats have increased the level of safety for the pediatric population, skull fracture and/or brain injury occur during the interaction between the child's head and interior of the car seats with no padding. The introduction of effective and sufficient padding may significantly reduce the head injury. The present study was designed to evaluate the biomechanical effects of padding in child seats to reduce the potential for head injury. A head drop test of a six-month old anthropomorphic dummy was conducted. The side of the dummy head impacted the interior wing of child car seats of relatively soft and stiff materials, and a rigid metal plate at velocities of 2.2, 4.5 and 6.7 m/s. In all tests, three types of padding environments were used (no padding, comfort foam, 16 to 19 mm polypropylene padding). All data were collected at 10 kHz and filtered. A total of 39 tests were conducted. The head injury criteria (HIC), and head acceleration, and head angular acceleration were obtained. The HIC was calculated over a 36 ms interval from the resultant tri-axial acceleration. The angular accelerations were derived from the angular velocity data. The head injury biomechanical parameters decreased with the addition of padding. The HIC, peak acceleration, and angular acceleration were reduced up to 91%, 80%, and 61% respectively. The present results emphasize the importance of energy absorbing padding to provide an improved safety environment in child car seats.