Neck injuries caused by rear-end collisions have become a major problem in traffic safety over the last two decades, however, surprisingly little effort has been made so far to improve car seat and head rest design. Several studies have shown, that whiplash injuries can be reduced by minimizing the gap between head and head restraint during the first phase of a rear-end impact. On the other han...

Occupants’ presence and actions within the built environment are crucial aspects related to understanding variations in energy use. Within this chapter, first, a nomenclature for the field of research dealing with occupants in buildings is defined. This nomenclature distinguishes between occupants’ presence and behavior, states and actions, adaptive triggers, non-adaptive triggers, and contextu...

Various factors play a part in the energy consumption of a building : its physical properties, the equipment installed for its functioning (the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system, auxiliary production of electricity or hot water), the outdoor environment and the behaviour of its occupants. While software tool designers have made great progress in the simulation of the first three ...

Over 30 000 fatalities related to the road transport system are reported anually in Europe. Of these fatalities, the largest share is car occupants, even though significant improvements in vehicle safety have been achieved by the implementation of in-crash restraints and pre-crash driver support systems. Integration of pre-crash and in-crash safety systems has a potential to further reduce car ...

The objective of this study is to evaluate occupant posture change during pre‐impact braking and explain the effects of a motorized seatbelt (MSB) on occupant restraint. In order to simulate the pre‐impact condition, low‐speed sled tests on young adult male volunteers were conducted with a vehicle seat, a seatbelt and a foot rest. In this study, two seatbelt systems and two muscle tone ...

BACKGROUND Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death among children in the United States. Age- and size-appropriate child restraint use is the most effective method for reducing these deaths. METHODS CDC analyzed 2002–2011 data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System to determine the number and rate of motor-vehicle occupant deaths, and the proportion of unrestrained child deaths...

The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of obesity on occupant responses in frontal crashes using whole-body human finite element (FE) models representing occupants with different obesity levels. In this study, the geometry of THUMS 4 midsize male model was varied using mesh morphing techniques with target geometries defined by statistical models of external body contour and e...

In an effort to develop occupant protection standards for future crewed spacecraft, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been investigating the test device for human occupant restraint (THOR) dummy in relevant impact test scenarios. In this study, the biofidelity of THOR and total human model for safety (THUMS) finite element (FE) models were evaluated against a series o...

Energy inefficiency and underlying occupant discomfort associated with building thermal management systems have led to development of human-in-the-loop control system. Minimizing total energy consumption and maximizing comfort of all the occupants present is the major objective of such system based on human comfort feedback. However, the approaches proposed so far lack a built-in mechanism to e...

Occupancy sensors have the potential to significantly reduce energy use by switching off electrical loads when a normally occupied area is vacated. While occupancy sensors can be used to control a variety of load types, their most popular use has been to control lighting in commercial buildings. Manufacturers claim savings of 15% to 85%, although there is little published research to support th...