Twenty-one students from the department of mechanical aerospace and engineering gathered April 4 to showcase the results of their eight-month long bicycle crash test dummy project.
The project is the brainchild of professor Hanspeter Frei, said fourth-year mechanical engineering student Evan Heyes, who worked on the project.
Frei envisioned a crash test dummy that can be used for multiple different types of accidents, Heyes said.
“What we’re looking to do is create a crash test dummy over the course of five or six years that in the end, can simulate a human in almost any type of accident, as well as be used repeatedly,” he said.
The group eliminated the idea of doing a crash test dummy for cars because that’s been done to death, Heyes said. Cycling worked because the group wanted to focus on head and neck injuries, but still choose something topical, he added.
“Everybody has ridden a bike at some point in their life, and there’s very little research that’s been done on that specific field so we decided to try and expand [it],” he said.
The students’ crash test dummy stands out because it’s simple, he said.
The original crash test dummy was bought off the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website and modified in different ways, according to Heyes.
Most crash test dummies are currently only designed to go a couple feet then stop relatively slowly. However, the Carleton students’ dummy is designed to be more robust as they plan on sending it at speeds between 25 to 40 kilometres per hour before smashing it into concrete, he said.
The team spent the year conducting different tests, such as concussion analysis and what speeds are required to cause one, Heyes said.
“We’re going to have high speed cameras watching it so from those high speed cameras we can correlate how fast the dummy is moving, and how long it takes to stop, which gives us an acceleration,” he said. “We’re going to have accelerometers inside the head in order to get some data from the internal [effects] to the head.”
From there, the biomechanics will be able to tell how much damage was caused, or if it’s likely there’s a concussion, fraction, or cervical spine injury.
As nice as it would be to see their crash dummy used for other companies, it’s unlikely, Heyes said.
“The likelihood is that it will stay primarily a research vessel for people doing repeatable tests, such as what would break your leg, and how the damage would happen.”
In the end, Heyes said they have to figure out whether it’s going to work next year or not, and what needs to be further modified.
“When you’re an engineer, you know eventually your project has to come to an end, [but] I am excited to see what will happen.”
