Investigation of lower limb injury under different contact stiffness for drivers during frontal crash

Lower extremity injuries in AIS2+ were the most costly injuries through the statistic analysis of traffic accidents. This study aimed to investigate the response characteristics of the lower limb with different contact stiffness, in which knee cushion and foot cushion were applied. First, a model with a human body and a car was established, and the muscle function was activated in lower extremity of human model. Second, the deceleration pulse with a peak of 186 m/s2 was applied to the car to simulate the frontal crash. Then, four sets of simulations with different contact stiffness are conducted to obtain the lower limb responses. Results indicate that the maximum loading of the left and right legs during the impact wes 1.29 and 1.22 kN, respectively. Meanwhile, the maximum moment were 28.82 and 52.17 Nm, respectively. The maximum stress of lower extremity was 87.35 MPa, and the maximum tibia index was 0.230. It was demonstrated that the injury risk of the femur in the groups with equipment of knee cushion and foot cushion was low, but the injury risk of the tibia increased at the same time. This study could provide a reference to the study of lower limb injury in a frontal impact.