Title: Head injury criterion: the best way to evaluate head damage?

Authors: Carolina Alvarez-Caldas, Alejandro Quesada, Jose Luis San Roman, Ester Olmeda

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University Carlos III of Madrid, Avda. Universidad, No. 30, 28911 Leganes, Spain. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, University Carlos III of Madrid, Avda. Universidad, No. 30, 28911 Leganes, Spain. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, University Carlos III of Madrid, Avda. Universidad, No. 30, 28911 Leganes, Spain. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, University Carlos III of Madrid, Avda. Universidad, No. 30, 28911 Leganes, Spain

Abstract: During the design and construction of a new car model, there are a lot of important aspects that have to be taken into account. The car|s designers look for a beautiful appearance, for a car as light as possible, try to reduce the manufacture costs and times and, of course, want to guarantee that their car is as safe as it can be. There are several criteria that allow to quantify the safety of a car. One of them, the Head Injury Criterion (also known as HIC) gives a measure of the damage that the head can suffer in case of collision. This paper presents a review of some works related to this criterion. It will be proved that the HIC has several limitations that allow to say that this criterion is clearly improvable.

Keywords: head injury criterion; HIC; safety; vehicle design; human factors; vehicle collisions; head injuries; accidents.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVD.2007.014913

International Journal of Vehicle Design, 2007 Vol.45 No.3, pp.411 - 425

Published online: 17 Aug 2007 *

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