Assessment of the Q dummy in the EC CHILD project

TRL was a partner in the European 5th Framework Project CHILD (Child Injury Led Design). The Department for Transport (DfT) funded TRL’s participation jointly with the European Commission. One of the main aims of the project was to develop injury risk curves for the Q Series family of child dummies. The risk curves were developed from a large programme of full scale accident reconstructions. During the course of the project, TRL and the DfT suggested a programme of research to support the objectives of the CHILD project. The other participants felt that this proposal was outside the scope of the project; nevertheless, TRL proceeded with the work funded solely by the DfT. The work was carried out alongside and at the same time as CHILD and is described in this report. There were two main elements to the research. Firstly, an evaluation of the Q3 dummy against performance targets in the literature, and secondly, a comparison between new and old versions of the dummy. The results highlighted that the Q3 did not meet all of its performance targets. In particular, the chest was too stiff to meet the current front and side impact targets and the shoulder was too stiff for its side impact target. The two versions of the Q3 recorded different loads when subjected to the same test conditions. This implies that crash test data recorded with the old version should not be used in the same dataset as data recorded with the new version. These findings were used to comment on some of the methods used in the CHILD project and to suggest ways that the data generated by the CHILD project could be used in the future.