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Elbow Joint Injuries from Side Airbags
In order to characterize the interaction between
a small female upper extremity and a deploying side air bag, a study was
performed that utilized 12 tests with small female cadavers and 15 tests with
the instrumented SAE 5th percentile female upper extremity attached
to the 5th percentile Hybrid III female dummy.
The upper extremity was loaded by a deploying seat mounted thoracic side
air bag in a static test environment. Chondral
and osteochondral fractures in the elbow joint were recorded for seven of the
twelve cadaver tests, while a simple fracture of the distal humerus head was
observed in one test. Linear
regression was performed to correlate occurrence of observed injury and the test
parameters. Injury risk functions
were constructed for age, forearm acceleration, elbow moment, and air bag
inflator level.
REFERENCES:
Duma, S.M., Crandall, J.R., Hurwitz, S.R., Pilkey, W.D., "Small Female Upper Extremity Interaction with a Deploying Side Air Bag," Proceedings of the 42nd Stapp Car Crash Conference, Tempe, Arizona, November, 1998.
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Virginia
Tech / Wake Forest University Center for Injury Biomechanics