Research on the Effect of Rear Seat Structure on Child Occupant Safety

This paper aims to study the effect of the rear seat structure on child occupant protection. According to GB15083-2006 standard, a finite element model of luggage cabin and rear-row seat was developed in LS-DYNA and validated via test results. The model was used in analysis of the safety performance of rear seat structure under luggage impact in car frontal crashes, in order to minimize the risk of child occupant injury. A 3 years old child seat was simulated with fixing on the rear seat. Four optimization schemes were designed in order to reduce the intrusion and acceleration of the rear seat structure, comparing to the original model. The original model was improved via the structure optimization of rear seat, as well as the fixed positions of child seat. A verification model is developed to simulate rear seat impact with combined optimization schemes. The final results from the verification model show that the intrusion and acceleration of rear seat structure are all much smaller than original seat model.