Development and full-scale dummy tests of a pop-up hood system for pedestrian protection

A pop-up hood system has been developed to reduce the severity of head injuries to pedestrians in pedestrian-to-automobile accidents. The system employs sensors located on the bumper to detect impact with a pedestrian. If an impact occurs, a signal is sent to an actuator to raise the rear portion of the engine hood approximately 100mm. This provides a space between the engine and other hard components and the hood, resulting in reduced pedestrian head injuries. Previous studies have mainly employed headform impactors to evaluate the head injury criteria (HIC) values for pop-up hoods. This report describes studies of the effect of the pop-up hood on injury parameters and kinematics using the POLAR pedestrian dummy. The effectiveness of the pop-up hood system was confirmed by the significant reduction of HIC values in impact tests using the POLAR dummy.