While NCAC's primary research mission focuses on ground transportation safety issues, research efforts often extend beyond the road. Working in partnership with GW faculty and experts in other industries, NCAC has transferred the tools and knowledge used to address vehicle, passenger and highway structure safety issues to other transportation areas successfully.
For example, NCAC researchers are now simulating a variety of crash scenarios for wide-body commercial jetliners in their effort to model the September 11 World Trade Center attacks. Ultimately, the models will give investigators and federal agencies a better understanding of the mechanics of the impacts, as well as the knowledge they need to establish new building structural design and egress codes.
In addition, the NCAC's work has helped the U.S. Department of State, the United States Secret Service and the National Capital Planning Commission step up protection of U.S. physical assets both here and abroad. This research has focused primarily on creating or improving anti-ram devices that protect buildings from vehicle bombings.
NCAC's engineers make full use of tools and research findings available from other fields to support their transportation research. In particular, they collaborate with other GW faculty and with other organizations and institutions to pursue fundamental research projects that will further develop their modeling and testing tools.
Ultimately, many industries benefit from NCAC's work. The NCAC's teams collaborate regularly with others to investigate a variety of special topics to advance some of the many fundamental disciplines that either complement or support transportation safety research. These advanced topics include:
- Modeling composite material failure, such as on the award-winning GW solar car, to address driver safety during a severe impact.
- Modeling aluminum failure through full-vehicle simulations for the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) program.
- Developing an artificial neural network application to help conduct vehicle compatibility studies by modeling car-to-barrier and car-to-car crashes efficiently.
- Creating an advanced failure model in the explicit FE code to replicate fractions both in the brittle metal used in roadside hardware and such biomechanical materials as bone.
- Investigating advanced FE topics such as meshless elements for larger, faster and more accurate models.
- Creating more efficient algorithms, which will help speed up design iterations.
NCAC's vision does not stop at the current state of the art, however. Researchers anticipate undertaking significant efforts that focus on such topics as using neural networks to predict injury in a multitude of complex impacts; using hybrid processors and other future technologies for high-performance computing; investigating the many facets of the dynamic nanotechnology field; and conducting multiphysics modeling.
URGENCY for Automatic Crash Notification
The “Golden Hour” is a term used to describe the window available for expected or increased survival rates following the onset of trauma. Within the “Golden Hour” following serious injury, an occupant's chance of survival is reduced with each minute that passes before rescue. Any improvement in today's system of rescue care that minimizes the time delay before a patient receives the most appropriate medical attention would lead to significant reduction in the burden of crash related trauma in the US.
Automatic Crash Notification Systems offer opportunities for morbidity and mortality reduction by extending safety features of vehicles beyond the pre-crash and crash event phases. Further, the union of crash information and medical services will enhance the overall quality of care provided to crash occupants through improved rescue decisions and in-hospital treatment.
URGENCY Algorithm
The URGENCY Algorithm was first proposed in 1997 by Malliaris and Digges. The algorithm offers a means to determine the likelihood of serious injury in the event of a motor vehicle crash. The algorithm, based on historical crash data, relates crash characteristics to injury severity outcomes so that the most appropriate level of rescue care can be provided rapidly, accurately and remotely in future systems.
Currently, researchers at the NCAC are working cooperatively with researchers at the William Lehman Injury Research Center to develop and evaluate predictive models like URGENCY for later implementation into rescue practices.
Ford Motor Company Grant for Automotive Safety Research
As reported in By George!, the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) received a $5 million grant from the Ford Motor Company to conduct research on automotive safety. Kennerly H. Digges, research professor of engineering and applied science, director of biomechanics and safety at the National Crash Analysis Center (NCAC) at the Virginia Campus, will direct the project aimed at further improving the safety of today's automobiles, with specific attention to child safety.
The funding was part of an out-of-court settlement that did not involve GW. Both Ford and the plaintiffs' class counsel agreed that more value could be added to the settlement by contributing to research efforts in safety. They also unanimously agreed that Digges was the best person to direct this research.
As part of the grant agreement, the NCAC received a $2.5 million research grant and Digges was authorized to designate the remaining funds to other institutions with established programs in safety research. The grant allows NCAC to collaborate with other research universities and institutes and pull the research together utilizing the skills of the best-of-the-best.
Along with targeted efforts in child safety, the research includes special topics in areas such as crash investigations, compatibility of large and small vehicles during impact, and the risk to the occupant on the non-struck side in lateral crashes. A summary of the progress is at Ford.ncac.gwu.edu.