ESI Expertise in Biomechanics

Historically, human models were first developed in the automotive industry in addition to crash test dummies. Indeed, human models have a more accurate biofidelity than dummy models, thus, their behavior during the crash test is closer to a real human body behavior during an impact. Today, various application fields can benefit from using human models.

ESI has been developing high quality and robust human models for decades and is well-known for its expertise in human models.

ESI is involved in several Biomechanics research projects and studies worldwide, especially in the fields of safety (impact loading in transportation, military, …), comfort, ergonomics, and medical. Such involvement allows ESI to always strengthen and develop its knowledge and expertise in Biomechanics.

Different levels of human models have been developed depending on the objectives of the project:

- Baseline models: articulated rigid models and simplified models of the whole human body allow you to perform realistic global simulation of the biomechanical response respectively in terms of kinematics and human-environment interaction. These kinds of models are numerical tools specifically adapted to parametric studies on human kinematics.

- Detailed models: deformable models which give access to the detailed local behavior of human body segments (head, neck, thorax, lower limbs…), including internal components such as the skeleton and soft tissues. For relevant load carrying tissues (bones, ligaments,…), their modeling enables simulate damages (fracture, tearing). The main interest of local models is to offer human models with capabilities predicting deformable behavior and particularly until injury for defined loadings.

Experimental tests involving the human body are exceptional, difficult to perform, difficult to analyze and restricted to non-production research activities. Their results can be used to calibrate and validate human models to well represent the behavior of the human body in specific accident scenarios. The principal benefit of the so-calibrated and validated human models is that they can be used in industrial virtual product design.

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