Development of a Neck Finite Element Model with Active Muscle Force for the THOR-50M Numerical Dummy

With the development of active safety technology, effort has gradually shifted to preventing or minimizing car crashes. Automatic Emergency Braking Technology (AEB) can avoid accidents by warning and even automatic braking, but there is a contradiction between the accompanying occupant out-of-position and traditional passive safety design. In addition, the 2025 version of C-NCAP plans to add neck injury assessment requirements for AEB [1]. In order to study the kinematic response of the occupant's neck under AEB, a neck finite element model with active muscle force is established in this paper. Firstly, the open-source THOR-50M neck geometric model is used for finite element discretization. Secondly, the neck FE model of THOR-50M is verified through the qualification procedure of the NHTSA standard. Thirdly, according to the geometric features of human neck muscles in Zygote Body database, the neck muscle parameters are preliminarily determined. Finally, the neck muscle parameters are corrected based on the occupant out-of-position test under AEB conditions. The benchmarking results show the model can truly reflect the head and neck movements of the occupants under AEB conditions. The neck FE model developed in this work can be used for the development and test evaluation of intelligent occupant restraint systems.