Sled acceleration control for low speed impact testing and transient response studies

Abstract

Whiplash Associated Disorder is the most common soft-tissue injury arising from low-speed car crashes (Siskind et al. 2013). To better understand whiplash injury mechanisms in the head-neck system, a sled was acquired. The sled was previously controlled in open loop mode, without any feedback of the resulting motion. The aim of this project is to safely control the motion and acceleration of the sled in order to be able to generate reproducible acceleration profiles.