Influence of Muscle Contraction on Pedestrian Injury in Pickup-Truck Collision

Putu Alit Putra, Bernd Markert, Julaluk Carmai

Abstract

Pedestrian safety remains a major public health concern. Although numerical human body models are widely used in the automotive industry, most lack active muscle representation, a factor that can influence body kinematics during low-speed collisions. This study investigates how skeletal muscle activation impacts pedestrian kinematics and injury. A skeletal muscle model combining 3D tetrahedral and 1D line elements was developed. Passive behavior was modeled using the Ogden model, while active behavior was based on the Hill-type muscle model. The model was validated against published data and integrated into a finite element pedestrian model. Four levels of muscle activation were applied to examine their effects on kinematics and injury metrics. Active muscle significantly influences pedestrian response during collisions. Models with active muscle demonstrated higher contact forces, head injury criteria, lower extremity bending moments, and knee shear distance but lower knee bending angles. For instance, at 20 km/h, comparing passive to fully active models revealed a significant 179% increase in Head Injury Criterion (HIC), a 10% decrease in knee bending angle, and a 7.7% increase in shear distance. Varying activation levels had a minimal effect on lower extremity forces and moments but influenced HIC and knee metrics. The same trends were observed at higher impact speeds. These results underscore that including active muscle behavior is essential for accurate pedestrian injury prediction in low-speed collisions.

Keywords

References

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DOI: 10.14416/j.asep.2025.12.001

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