Top Gear Fun

The 1st crash test dummy was “Sierra Sam.” Designed under contract to the U.S. Air Force by Sierra Engineering and Alderson Research Laboratories, Sierra Sam was a 95th percentile human replica. This means that “Sam” was larger and heavier than 95% of human males. It was used to check rocket sled ejection seats. In the 1950s, Alderson joined with Grumman to provide dummies that could be employed in both the aviation and auto industries.

“Sam” was succeeded by a VIP-50 series and a dummy called “Sierra Stan.” The features and benefits of these two dummies were combined in 1971 by GM engineers to create a series that came to be called Hybrid I. This design was a 50th percentile crash test dummy that could represent the average man in weight and height. A Society of Automotive Engineers collaboration enabled GM to share Hybrid I with its rivals, including Japanese car companies, together with a littler dummy representing a fifth percentile female. In 1972, a Hybrid II dummy was introduced. Hybrid I and II models were restricted to testing seatbelts.

So as to test injury reduction features, GM researchers made the Hybrid III family of crash test dummies in 1976. The Hybrid III family consists of fiftieth and ninety-fifth percentile males, a fifth percentile female and smaller crash dummies designed to represent 10, 6 and 3 year-old kids. Their 58 sensors record over 300,000 pieces of info in a 100 to 150 millisecond crash.

While the Hybrid III is best at testing head-on crashes, it’s inadequate for getting data for rollovers, side and rear impacts. Newer models were created to address these problems. SID, an acronym for side impact dummy, was developed to test the effects of these types of crashes. BioRID is the dummy used for rear impact incidents. The CRABI is a dummy that is meant to replicate 6, 12 and 18 month-old infants during seatbelt, airbag and more child restraint system tests.

The latest dummy model is THOR. Engineered to replace the Hybrid III family, THOR has a humanlike pelvis and back. THOR is used so that its face can judge facial impacts, info that is unobtained with the Hybrid III. THOR’s sensors are more accurate, greater in number and are more sensitive than any former crash test dummies.

Harold Smith blogs about car brands and other automobile related fields. Harold has does consulting work for some of the American car companies.

Tags: automotive tests, cars, crash rating, crash test, crash test dummies, crash testing, dummy models, history, history of crash testing

This entry was posted by Harold Smith on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Cars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.