Simulation of a Novel Restraint Safety Concept for Motorcycles

Accidents of powered two-wheelers are complex events whose outcome depends on many factors. Violent ejection of a rider from the motorcycle is a very likely accident pathway. The rider, striking objects in its path and the ground, often suffers multiple serious injuries at all body regions, resulting in permanent harm or even death. A novel restraint concept wants to solve this problem of insufficient passive safety of motorcycles without compromising its advantages as a compact means of transport and without losing its unique driving behavior. The innovative idea envisages that in case of an accident impact, the rider is restrained by thigh belts, multiple airbags, and leg impact protectors to the motorcycle. The objective of this work is to computationally model, simulate and investigate the proposed safety concept. The main research questions are: Is being restrained on a motorcycle safer than being subjected to the intrinsic unpredictability of a conventional motorcycle accident? What virtual models and numerical methods allow us to answer this? The results show what is possible with a fully virtual concept study. It is an efficient and effective simulation strategy to predict the accident behaviour. The simulations show a guided and controlled trajectory and deceleration of the rider, resulting in less critical biomechanical loads compared to an impact with a conventional motorcycle. The combination of multiple passive safety systems shows great promise in positively influencing accident behaviour and mitigating accident consequences and the study is the first step towards a holistic evaluation of the innovative idea but its modelling still needs to include many more possible accident types to rule out harmful effects in beyond-design-basis scenarios.