Acceleration Profile for Minimum Injury

For specified initial velocity and stopping distance, the acceleration-distance profile has a major influence on the extent of the injuries sustained by a human subject. Many trauma research and automotive and aircraft safety design considerations involve this relationship. The existence, uniqueness, and form of an acceleration profile which provides a minimum severity index are established in this paper. The profile is shown to produce a severity level 87 percent of that associated with a constant acceleration level. The form of this ``optimum'' profile is shown to be relatively insensitive to variations in the medical data utilized to develop the severity level. This result provides analytical support for work in areas where the medical data base is very limited.