ESI Group - Human modeling

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Human Modeling

Objectives

The main objective of human models is to offer a numerical tool to understand the behavior of the human body in diverse scenarios. Their main capabilities can be summarized by the following features:
- Biofidelic, multidirectional kinematic and dynamic response:
o Displacements / Rotations
o Velocities
o Accelerations
o Forces / Moments
o Stress and strain
- Basic injury mechanisms:
o Bone fractures
o Ligament tearing
o Brain damage…
- Muscle activity consideration, where their action is important for an accurate description of the human body behavior
- Adapted to the specific needs of given applications.

Nowadays numerical models of the human body are the only tool which allows the understanding of human behavior under given accidental circumstances. After their validation in relation to the project objectives, they can be used in parametric studies to analyze the effect of different environmental conditions and accident scenarios. They permit to take into account the human body diversity depending on subject-specific definitions or on population groups (different anthropometry, material characterization, etc.).

Development process

Human model development takes into account the specificities of the application to create validated models for realistic physical behavior and to ensure the quality of the numerical results under controlled friendly use and cost of CPU-time.
This development process involves the following items:
- Specificities of human model: depending on the defined application and needs
- Human geometry and discretization:
o Human anatomy (percentiles, age, gender, race, scatter, subject-specific, etc.)
o Scaling/morphing/aging and positioning conventions and algorithms
o Mesh rules for making models from the geometries and baseline meshes
- Bio-material definition:
o Behavior characterization
o Calibration
- Validation:
o Component tests and model validation
o Whole body tests and model validation
- Human Injury criteria and validated injury threshold values, if needed.

Thanks to sophisticated and adapted simulation tools, you will benefit from ESI’s expertise to help you transcribe all the relevant physical conditions and efficiently produce biomechanical system virtual models .

Depending on the needs of each industry, ESI identifies the human model which suits the best to represent the objectives. Based on its expertise in the modeling of biomechanical behavior, the selected model is adapted to reply to the specific needs of the customer’s class of applications.

Tools dedicated to the use of human models

In parallel to its human modeling activity, ESI has investigated in the development of scaling and positioning tools to increase its benefits and to facilitate its use in all fields.

Why scaling tool?

Even if the feasibility of any virtual design process can be performed with a generic human model, one of the advantages of human models is the capabilities to represent different groups of population (like percentiles in automotive industry) or a specific subject (like for pre-surgery topics).