Humanetics has been telling the US automotive development community at Automotive Testing Expo North America about the updates it has made to the Thor-5F ATD to enhance the dummy’s durability and usability. The refinements, which are being prepared for official release, focus primarily on the thorax region, addressing durability concerns in the severe test region that were reported by NHTSA. Humanetics has worked closely with the safety test organization to make these adjustments.
“The THOR-5F is small so there isn’t a lot of room inside, which means that when it is impacted, damage can occur,” said Breanna Greenlees, the company’s ATD engineering manager. “As such, we removed as much material as possible internally to eliminate contact. We have also updated the ribs of the dummy to resolve an issue we were seeing with permanent deformation.”
According to Greenlees, the bio-fidelity of the thorax has been re-evaluated and Humanetics has been able to demonstrate that it has maintained a good bio-rank.
“We have resolved issues that have been seen across the board, so people are happy to see that we’ve made these improvements and they are more comfortable that the dummy is ready for regulation,” she said.
The female ATD is not yet officially included in any vehicle safety regulations. Greenlees stressed that rule-making bodies need to prioritize this and continue their evaluations to push to get it into regulations. “It’s durable, it’s biofidelic and it’s ready,” she concluded.
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