MODELING AND ANALYSIS OF KNEE - DASHBOARD IMPACT IN FRONTAL COLLISION

? During the frontal collision of a vehicle, be it with another vehicle or with a fixed or mobile obstacle, one of the most frequent injuries suffered by the driver of the vehicle occurs in the knee joint. Thus, the present paper aims at investigating the knee to dashboard contact during a frontal collision. Admittedly, the first stage of our investigation underpinned the design of a model to encompass the dummy and the main interior elements of the vehicle. Subsequently, the main types of contacts provided by the LS-DYNA software have been analysed. In order to establish the optimal modelling variant of the impact between the knee and the dashboard various simulations have been carried out while applying different methods to define the contact. The results obtained following the simulations have been then compared to the results provided by the specialized literature.