Bionics and Human Biomechanics Applied in Intelligent Crash Tests of Cars

Improving crash safety of cars has become an important content in the research of automotive safety. The optimum design of intelligent crash test technology and devices for automotive safety has become a hot issue in the field. In order to test active safety or passive safety by braking or crash tests, intelligent testing devices (also called anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) or crash test dummies) need to describe and simulate the damage mechanism and the tolerance limit of biological characteristics of the human body, such as dynamics and kinematics response to impact or acceleration. This is essential to protect human beings from car accidents. Along with the increasing exploration of nature, organisms with rigid flexible coupling structures are gradually discovered, which have excellent performances such as impact resistance, abrasion resistance, and drag reduction. The combination of bionics and biomechanics constantly brings about new inspiration and innovation to the field of engineering and automotive safety. So, this special issue called for original research articles on basic biomechanical researches of the human body, computer simulation for human body modeling and analysis, new development of intelligent anthropomorphic test devices for measuring the response of the human body in certain environments where an impact or other loadings are applied to the body, and the application of bionic structures in automobiles to improve their anticollision performance. The contents can involve bionics, biomechanics, automobile engineering, human body modeling, impact and contact mechanics, materials science of skin, and high-precision sensor informatics and mechanical processing technology. The highly integrated dummy design is also subject to various standard calibration tests, so this special issue is a cross-discipline.