Analysis of dynamic loads of the armoured personnel carrier crew during frontal crash

The work describes chosen problem connected with using of armoured personnel carriers (APC) in the frame of stabilisation and peacekeeping mission. The new type of tasks appears: ramming obstacles such as fences, entry gates, light engineering obstacles and also pushing other vehicles aside the road in order to obtain trafficability. The main threat in such situation is a risk of serious injury of soldiers inside vehicle. The lack of a crumple zone increases a value of acceleration acting on the crew. In the work models of driver and crew member seats used in the APC were showed. To the tests a Hybrid III 50th male dummy model in a seated position were used, which is a good representation of the average population of men. To the modelling LS-DYNA software was applied. The work shows the numeric test results. Behaviour of the dummies during the impact on both the driver and crew member were presented. To assess a risk of injury standard indicators of crash test were used, including: maximum value of the head acceleration, the criterion HIC and the maximum values of the forces and moments in the neck. The distributions of these parameters were presented. Results of simulation indicated that velocity and location of dummies has large influence on levels of dynamic loads. To further research is proposed to take into consideration models of dummy with additional equipment of soldiers (e.g. a helmet, a weapon, a bullet-proof jacket).