Abstract:
With the increase of road traffic accidents increasing due to motorised traffic
in the developing world growing alongside the more traditional bicycles and
light motorcycles there is good reason to re-examine the two-wheeler case. In
addition, if you include the large congestion charge scheme now underway in
London and similar projects being considered in other cities globally, there is
an even stronger case. These schemes encourage commuters to get back
onto two wheels but with a potential increase in road traffic accidents.
The development of Explicit Finite Element Analysis (FEA) over the last 15
years, and large improvements in solver times has made examination of
complex impact events achievable. As an extension of this knowledge it is
now beginning to be feasible to consider the complex case of injury to
vulnerable road users (VRU's).
This thesis describes why two-wheeler accidents are increasingly relevant,
and the details of which injuries are most common in each particular case.
From physical testing, bicycle models for adult and child cases were created
and the most relevant car to cyclist accident scenarios re-constructed.
Existing humanoid models and vehicle models were adapted to understand
biomechanical effects in the collision.
The results show that although there is great variation due to this complex
event in terms of biomechanical and frictional effects and therefore the
resulting kinematics, as a mathematical method of investigating future protection devices it should be possible to gain a greater understanding of
their effects in the real world. To this end a final section detailing the
development of active and passive technologies (including structural
optimisation techniques) has been included.
