Kevin Moorhouse

U.S. Department of Transportation · National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

div>Oblique motor vehicle crashes can cause serious head or brain injuries due to contact with interior vehicle structures even with the deployment of air bags, as they are not yet completely successful in preventing traumatic brain injury. Rotational head velocity is strongly correlated to the risk of brain injury, and this head motion is potentia...

The objective of this study was to assess the biofidelity of the Global Human Body Models Consortium (GHBMC) 50th male (M50-O) v6.0 seated in an upright (25-degree recline) all-belts-to-seat (ABTS) in a 56 km/h rear-facing frontal impact. The experimental boundary conditions from the post-mortem human subjects (PMHS) tests were replicated in the co...

div>Some anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) currently being developed are equipped with abdominal pressure twin sensors (APTS) for the assessment of abdominal injuries and as an indicator of the occurrence of the submarining of an occupant during a crash event. The APTS is comprised of a fluid-filled polyurethane elastomeric bladder which is seale...

Objective: In 2020, 17% of all crash fatalities were individuals aged 65 years or older. Crash data also revealed that for older occupants, thoracic related injuries are among the leading causes of fatality. Historically, the majority of near-side impact postmortem human subjects (PMHS) studies used a generic load wall to capture external loads th...

Objective: One potential nonstandard seating configuration for vehicles with automated driving systems (ADS) is a reclined seat that is rear-facing when in a frontal collision. There are limited biomechanical response and injury data for this seating configuration during high-speed collisions. The main objective of this study was to investigate tho...

Objective: The objective of this study was the quantitative evaluation and comparison of the responses of the Hybrid III 5th percentile female (HIII-05F) and the 5th percentile female Test Device for Human Occupant Restraint (THOR-05F) anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) subjected to abdominal loading conditions. Method: The HIII-05F and THOR-05...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to generate biomechanical response corridors of the small female thorax during a frontal hub impact and evaluate scaled corridors that have been used to assess biofidelity of small female anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) and human body models (HBMs). Methods: Three small female postmortem human subject...

Motor vehicle crashes can produce serious head or brain injuries due to contact with interior vehicle structures. It has been found through both field data analysis and experimental testing that many of these brain injuries occur in oblique crashes, even with the deployment of air bags. Research has determined that rotational head velocity is stron...

The objective of this study was to generate biomechanical corridors from post-mortem human subjects (PMHS) in two different seatback recline angles in 56 km/h sled tests simulating a rear-facing occupant during a frontal vehicle impact. PMHS were placed in a production seat which included an integrated seat belt. To achieve a repeatable configurati...

Thorax injuries mainly due to rib fractures have been associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality in motor vehicle crashes. Thoracic biomechanics has been studied extensively, but there are no robust biomechanical response targets for ribs that consider age, sex, body size, and vulnerability factors. The objective of this study was to gen...

Due to high-rate loads placed on the torso during motor vehicle crashes, the human thorax is commonly injured, and resulting rib fractures are linked to fatalities. The goal of this study was to explore the variation in strain modes, magnitudes, and rates of rib levels 3-8 in a dynamic, distributed loading scenario in a series of hierarchical tissu...

One potential non-standard seating configuration for vehicles with automated driving systems is to have seating that faces the centre of the vehicle. This would result in the rear-facing seats experiencing rear-impact crash dynamics when the vehicle is in a frontal collision. Because rear crashes often occur at low speeds, there are limited biomech...

The most urgent issues in crash safety research have typically been identified using retrospective, real-world crash data. Methods have been developed to instead project estimates of crash frequency and outcomes in the future, to better identify the issues that are most urgent for crash safety research. With these methods, future crash projections...

Thoracic injuries are frequently observed in motor vehicle crashes, and rib fractures are the most common of those injuries. Thoracic response targets have previously been developed from data obtained from post-mortem human subject (PMHS) tests in frontal loading conditions, most commonly of mid-size males. Traditional scaling methods are employed...

This study investigated the response of the Global Human Body Models Consortium (GHBMC) M50-O v4.5 model in a simulated thoracic impact and compared to the responses of post-mortem human subjects (PMHS) in physical experiments. The model was simulated in four tissue states: intact, intact with upper limbs removed, denuded (superficial tissue remove...

Thoracic injuries, specifically rib fractures, are prevalent in motor vehicle crashes and are a significant source of morbidity and mortality. Rib fractures present in a variety of patterns, ranging in severity from minor to severe. The number of fractures also contributes to the injury assessment; as fracture number increases, severity increases....

Exploring various factors on why ribs did not fail on dynamic impact

Thoracic injuries continue to be a major health concern in motor vehicle crashes. Previous thoracic research has focused on 50th percentile males and utilized scaling techniques to apply results to different demographics. Individual rib testing offers the advantage of capturing demographic differences; however, understanding of rib properties in th...

Despite safety advances, thoracic injuries in motor vehicle crashes remain a significant source of morbidity and mortality, and rib fractures are the most prevalent of thoracic injuries. The objective of this study was to explore sources of variation in rib structural properties in order to identify sources of differential risk of rib fracture betw...

Head and neck responses of anthropomorphic test devices and computational human body models should be validated in different impact modes, e.g., frontal, oblique, side, and twist. The main objective of this study is to create biomechanical response targets of the head and neck of post mortem human surrogates using a controlled mini-sled system in v...

The sequential excitation of transducer elements in linear ultrasound arrays can produce distorted images in B-mode since the A-lines in an image frame are not captured at the same time. If the imaged tissue is moving laterally during image acquisition, substantial distortion can occur and lead to errors in tissue displacement and velocity measurem...

The objective of this study is to present a quantitative comparison of the biofidelity of the THOR and Hybrid III 50th percentile male ATDs. Quantitative biofidelity was assessed using NHTSA's Biofidelity Ranking System in a total of 21 test conditions, including impacts to the head, face, neck, upper thorax, lower oblique thorax, upper abdomen, lo...

Rib fractures sustained during motor vehicle crashes are a common cause of increased mortality, and their causes within and between individuals is not fully understood. This study aimed to identify the effect of body height, body weight, and body mass index (BMI) on measured structural properties of human ribs. Two‐ hundred sixty one ribs from one‐...

Normalisation is the process of modifying a set of post‐mortem human subject (PMHS) response data to better represent that of a standard sized human. This improved method is based on the fact that all plots of deflection energy versus deflection for the thorax are of constant slope. The deflection energy is the integral of the applied impact force...

The human thorax is commonly injured in motor vehicle crashes, and despite advancements in occupant safety rib fractures are highly prevalent. The objective of this study was to quantify the ability of gross and cross-sectional geometry, separately and in combination, to explain variation of human rib structural properties. One hundred and twenty-t...

Elderly persons (>65 years) have an increased injury susceptibility to subdural hematoma (SDH) during both falls and motor-vehicle accidents. Increased SDH occurrence with age may be a result of brain atrophy, quantified as decreasing brain parenchymal fraction (BPF), that leads to greater relative displacement during rotational motion. The purpose...

Motor vehicle collision (MVC) was the second leading cause of traumatic brain injury (TBI) with an estimated 292,202 people (17.3%) sustaining a TBI from MVC annually. MVC resulted in the largest percentage of TBI related deaths with 16,402 occurring annually (31.8%). Six degrees of freedom (6 DOF) rigid body kinematics are often measured using six...

Injuries to the brain come in many different forms,from traumatic brain injuries such as concussions and contusions to acquired brain injuries such as anoxia and hypoxia.In order to study these injuries, human cadavers have been used to simulate an in vivosubject condition. However, at the instant of death, the brain begins its tissue decomposition...

Objectives: In order to understand the mechanisms of TBI and develop proper safety measures, it is essential that accurate instrumentation methods are utilized. The Brain Injury Criterion (BrIC) has been developed and validated to predict brain injuries in combination with the head injury criterion (Takhounts et al., 2011 Takhounts EG, Hasija V, Ri...

Objective: A multi-harm approach for analyzing crash and injury data was developed for the ultimate purpose of getting a richer picture of motor vehicle crash outcomes identifying research opportunities in crash safety. Methods: Methods were illustrated using a retrospective analysis of 69,597 occupant cases from NASS CDS (National Automotive Sampl...

Objective: To compare the responses of male and female WorldSID dummies with post mortem human subject (PMHS) responses in full-scale vehicle tests. Methods: Tests were conducted according to the FMVSS-214 protocols and using the United States Side impact New Car Assessment Program change in velocity to match PMHS experiments, published earlier. Mo...

Elderly persons (>65 years) have an increased injury susceptibility to subdural hematoma (SDH) during both falls and motor-vehicle accidents. Increased SDH occurrence with age may be a result of brain atrophy, quantified as decreasing brain parenchymal fraction (BPF), that leads to greater relative motion during rotational loads. The purpose of thi...

Past studies have found that a pressure based injury risk function was the best predictor of liver injuries due to blunt impacts. In an effort to expand upon these findings, this study investigated the biomechanical responses of the abdomen of post mortem human surrogates (PMHS) to high-speed seatbelt loading and developed external response targets...

When the Hybrid III 10-year old (HIII-10C) anthropomorphic test device (ATD) was adopted into Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 49 Part 572 as the best available tool for evaluating large belt-positioning booster seats in Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 213, NHTSA stated that research activities would continue to improve the perfo...

Thoracic injuries from motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) are common in children and the elderly and are associated with a high rate of mortality for both groups. Rib fractures, in particular, are linked to high mortality rates which increase with the number of fractures sustained. Anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) and computational models have been de...

Most anthropomorphic test devices possess both an upper neck and a lower neck load cell to measure the risk of neck injury in crash simulations. For post‐mortem human subject (PMHS) testing, the neck is frequently assumed to be a “massless link”. It is unknown how much error is generated by this assumption. The objective of this study is to investi...

The immediate goal of this research effort was to develop experimental methods to image and quantify the relative motion of the meninges and peripheral brain during head motion. Specifically, B-mode ultrasound was used to image these tissues in post-mortem human subject heads during anterior-posterior rotation testing. These procedures are needed t...

In a previous study, a comparison of cervical spine kinematics between a current rear impact dummy, BioRID II, and post mortem human subjects (PMHS) was made by subjecting them to moderate speed rear impacts while positioned in an experimental seat. The objective of this study is to make a similar comparison of head and cervical spine kinematics in...

The ability to measure six degree of freedom head kinematics in impact conditions (i.e. motor vehicle crashes and sport activities) plays an important role in injury assessment of the head/neck complex. Potential accuracy of head instrumentation schemes have recently been improved by using advanced angular rate sensors, so in this study an instrume...

The objective of this study was to obtain head and cervical spine responses of post mortem human subjects (PMHS) in moderate speed rear impacts while positioned in production seats. Instrumentation used to measure biomechanical responses of the PMHS included both accelerometers and angular rate sensors (ARS). A total of seven sled tests using seven...

The purpose of this study is to characterize the tensile stress of human ribs across the lifespan. One-hundred six whole ribs from 43 subjects were experimentally tested in a bending scenario using a custom fixture to simulate a dynamic frontal impact. Ages ranged from nine to 92 years old, with a mean age of 60 years and representation in each dec...

The large omnidirectional child (LODC) anthropomorphic test device (ATD) thorax has a flexible thoracic spine to address chin-to-chest contacts in existing child ATDs. To compare this 10 year old-sized ATD response to human spine data, a biofidelity target was derived by scaling and normalizing adult postmortem human subject (PMHS) thoracic spine d...

Generating a target for the quantitative assessment of crash dummy biofidelity based on normalized post-mortem human subject (PMHS) response data is important for dummy design and development. Normalization is the process of modifying a set of PMHS response data to represent the response of a typical sized human, for example the 50th percentile mal...

Objective: The objectives of this study are to propose a new instrumentation technique for measuring cervical spine kinematics, validate it, and apply the instrumentation technique to postmortem human subjects (PMHS) in rear impact sled tests so that cervical motions can be investigated. Methods: First, a new instrumentation and dissection techn...

Rotational motion of the head as a mechanism for brain injury was proposed back in the 1940s. Since then a multitude of research studies by various institutions were conducted to confirm/reject this hypothesis. Most of the studies were conducted on animals and concluded that rotational kinematics experienced by the animal's head may cause axonal de...

The risk of rib fracture significantly increases with age with compounding deleterious effects. Previous research identifying rib properties has provided useful information for application in car safety. However, no study to-date has included a comprehensive sample including pediatric and elderly ribs tested in the same repeatable set-up. The goal...

Traumatic injury is a major cause of death in the child population. Motor vehicle crashes account for a large portion of these deaths, and a considerable effort is put forth by the safety community to identify injury mechanisms and methods of injury prevention. However, construction of biofidelic anthropomorphic test devices and computational model...

The goal of this study is to evaluate both the internal and external biofidelity of existing rear impact anthropomorphic test devices (BioRID II, RID3D, Hybrid III 50th) in two moderate-speed rear impact sled test conditions (8.5g, 17 km/h; 10.5g, 24 km/h) by quantitatively comparing the ATD responses to biomechanical response targets developed fro...

The objectives of this study were to obtain biomechanical responses of post mortem human subjects (PMHS) by subjecting them to two moderate-speed rear impact sled test conditions (8.5g, 17 km/h; 10.5g, 24 km/h) while positioned in an experimental seat system, and to create biomechanical targets for internal and external biofidelity evaluation of re...

The goal of this study is to evaluate both the internal and external biofidelity of existing rear impact anthropomorphic test devices (BioRID II, RID3D, Hybrid III 50th) in two moderate-speed rear impact sled test conditions (8.5g, 17 km/h; 10.5g, 24 km/h) by quantitatively comparing the ATD responses to biomechanical response targets developed fro...

The ability to measure six degrees of freedom (6 DOF) head kinematics in motor vehicle crash conditions is important for assessing head-neck loads as well as brain injuries. A method for obtaining accurate 6 DOF head kinematics in short duration impact conditions is proposed and validated in this study. The proposed methodology utilizes six acceler...

Compare muscle activity and trunk stiffness during isometric trunk flexion and extension exertions. Elastic stiffness of the torso musculature is considered the primary stabilizing mechanism of the spine. Therefore, stiffness of the trunk during voluntary exertions provides insight into the stabilizing control of pushing and pulling tasks. Twelve p...

Spinal stability is related to both the intrinsic stiffness of active muscle as well as neuromuscular reflex response. However, existing analyses of spinal stability ignore the role of the reflex response, focusing solely on the intrinsic muscle stiffness associated with voluntary activation patterns in the torso musculature. The goal of this study...