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Verification and optimization of impact-response consistency in human thoracic targets for blunt ballistic impact
Jiakai Wu1,2, Song Wang1, Jiaming Song1,2
1School of Equipment Management & Support, Chinese People's Armed Police Force Engineering University, Xi'an, China.
Introduction:
The validation of human thorax targets for blunt ballistic impact injury assessment is a critical component in investigating their impact responses. Existing studies generally validate physical and finite-element (FE) thoracic targets independently against standardized response corridors. However, whether these two targets produce quantitatively consistent responses under identical blunt ballistic impact conditions remains insufficiently investigated.
Methods:
To resolve the discrepancy in impact responses between physical and digital thorax targets and establish a verification method for the consistency of blunt impact responses between physical and digital human thoracic targets for non-lethal kinetic projectiles, a 3-rib physical thoracic target with ribs made of three different materials was constructed, and the CHEST finite-element model was selected as the digital target. According to AEP-99 standards, blunt impact tests and numerical simulations of SIR-X projectiles were conducted at impact velocities of 56 m/s and 86.5 m/s. Each impact condition was tested three times, and the repeatability and uncertainty were evaluated using the coefficient of variation.
Results:
The coefficients of variation ranged from 2.74% to 12.20%, indicating acceptable experimental repeatability. The results show that both the physical target with PA66+GF30 ribs and the CHEST digital target meet the standard requirements for displacement-time curves and peak viscous response values. Using the physical test results as a reference, LS-OPT and the sequential response surface method were employed to optimize the Young's modulus of costal cartilage in the digital target. After optimization, the normalized mean absolute error of the displacement response between the physical and digital targets decreased from 4.8% to 3.4% at 56 m/s and from 12.5% to 4.9% at 86.5 m/s, greatly improving consistency.
Discussion:
Thus, this study demonstrates that the proposed verification method effectively enhances the biomechanical reliability of digital thoracic targets. The validated physical and digital targets can provide standardized testing and technical support for thoracic injury assessment, experimental validation, and safety design of non-lethal kinetic projectiles.
