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Children involved in car accidents could be spared serious injury thanks to a US team’s work on more sophisticated crash test dummies. It has come up with a smart abdominal insert that will improve understanding of crashes on young bodies.

US traffic accident data indicates that damage to internal organs is common among children aged 4–8 restrained by adult car seatbelts during crashes.

The development of dedicated restraint systems for children has been hampered on two fronts. Conventional dummies focus on head and chest injuries and are unsuitable for data capture on abdominal loads. And there has been a lack of technology to measure the abdominal response in paediatric dummies.

Ford passive safety R&D engineer Stephen Rouhana said: “Almost no data exists. None of the current child frontal crash test dummies has an abdomen that measures injury risk and has the appropriate bio-fidelity.”

Experts from Ford, Wayne State University, the University of West Virginia, Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, research firm STR Systems and safety supplier Takata collaborated on the project. Work began in 2003.

The insert is modelled on a six-year-old child. It is a silicone shell, built-up in layers from liquid silicone. This produces similar deformation characteristics to a child’s abdomen.

It contains an LED and an optical sensor, immersed in coloured silicone fluid. Distortion of the insert during crash is determined by measuring light absorption of the fluid.

The project should conclude by the end of this year. The insert will then be available for wider evaluation.