Many vehicle design and safety assessment applications use physical and virtual representations of vehicle occupants within the vehicle interior. Proper use of these human models requires accurate data concerning vehicle occupant posture and position. This paper presents techniques for characterizing vehicle occupant posture by measuring accessible body landmarks. The landmark locations are use...

This research compares the ability of delta-V and the occupant impact velocity (OIV), a competing measure of crash severity, to predict occupant injury in real world collisions. A majority of the analysis is performed using 191 cases with vehicle kinematics data from Event Data Recorders (EDRs) matched with detailed occupant injury information. Cumulative probability of injury risk curves are g...

The occupant impact velocity (OIV) and acceleration severity index (ASI) are competing measures of crash severity used to assess occupant injury risk in full-scale crash tests involving roadside safety hardware, e.g. guardrail. Delta-V, or the maximum change in vehicle velocity, is the traditional metric of crash severity for real world crashes. This study compares the ability of the OIV, ASI, ...

BACKGROUND Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death among children in the United States. Age- and size-appropriate child restraint use is the most effective method for reducing these deaths. METHODS CDC analyzed 2002–2011 data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System to determine the number and rate of motor-vehicle occupant deaths, and the proportion of unrestrained child deaths...

A personalized thermal comfort prediction method is proposed for use in combination with smart controls for building automation. Occupant thermal comfort is traditionally measured and predicted by the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) metric, which is based on extensive field trials linking reported comfort levels with the various factors. However, PMV is a statistical measure applying to large populat...

Computational human body models are widely used for automotive crash-safety research and design and as such have significantly contributed to a reduction of traffic injuries and fatalities. Currently crash simulations are mainly performed using models based on crash-dummies. However crash dummies differ significantly from the real human body and moreover crash dummies are only available for a l...

Occupant satisfaction with indoor environmental conditions are in close relation to energy consumption in buildings. Despite the increasing efforts to maintain thermal comfort conditions in buildings with control strategies, occupants are not usually satisfied, and, thus, change their behavior which generally interfere with building operation systems. Therefore, modeling and characterizing occu...

This paper reports the development of a methodology for identifying and improving occupant behavior in existing residential buildings. In this study, end-use loads were divided into two levels (i.e. main and sub-category), and they were used to deduce corresponding two-level user activities (i.e. general and specific occupant behavior) indirectly. The proposed method is based on three basic dat...

Introduction and shoulder belts (type 2 seat belts) help to reduce the risk of injury due to im­ vehicle interior and occupant. Seat belts also help distribute restraining forces Seat belts are the primary occupant pacts with vehicle interior components or over sturdy skeletal areas of the body. restraint system in passenger vehicles. ejection. Seat belts provide occupant However, the effective...

A dual-mode demand control ventilation strategy was established targeting at use in buildings where the number of occupants varies frequently. The 4rst contaminant chosen for sensor control is CO2 and the second is a non-occupant-related indoor pollutant which indicates the demand of fresh air to dilute the non-occupant-related indoor contaminants. Experiments were conducted to verify the perfo...