Book Description

The first part of the study is undertaken to investigate the need for a motorcycle safety helmet for children. from the field observation and interviewed conducted, it was found that the currentsituation warrants the need for a motorcycle safety helmets for children to be developed. motorcycle safety helmet, as an injury control device is used to curb the high fatality rate associated with head injuries among motorcycle users. In addition, a field study was conducted to investigate the design parameters of the helmet. A head size of 570mm in circumference was selected based on the size that fits the maximumnumbers of users and the availability of the test head from sizes. It was found that a lighter helmet is generally preferred from the comfort viewpoint. The second part of study involves the design of motorcycle safety helmet for children. Afinite elementmodel of the children motorcycle safety helmet for impact test was developed using Hypermash, a pre-processor. LS-DYNA, a finite element code was use to simulate the impact response of the helmet. The model was validated using an indirect inference approach. The results clearly indicate that the model correlated well with the experiment results from literatures. A simple parametric study was carried out investigate the effect of varying thicknesses of the Acrymonitrile Butadiene Sytrene (ABS) shell and the Expanded Polystreyrene (EPS) foam. It was found that the typical thucknesses of the shell and foam provide the best compromise between the shock absorbing performance and the design constrain. None of the eight impacts simulated in accordance to the MS 1: 1996 type test resulted in an accelaration exceeding the permissible level of 300 g. From the simulation, the helmet impact deformation mechanism were discussed. It is recommended that future research to be carried out to further improe the design of the motorcycle safety helmet and to study the possible ventilation systems. In addition, it is suggested that a more stringent from of verification to be undertaken to validate the FE model of the internet.