Local

Kettering professor helps design new car seat

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Tags:

local, randy conat

Randy Conat
More: Bio, E-mail, News Team

FLINT (WJRT) -- (06/30/09) -- In a couple of months a new child safety designed to offer more protection against head injuries will go on sale.

Much of the research was done at Kettering University in Flint.

For the past two years, researchers from Dorel Juvenile Group have been leasing Kettering's Crash Safety Center. They've been trying to design a child safety seat that would offer better side impact protection.

Dr. Janet Brelin-Fornari is a professor of mechanical engineering and the director of Kettering's Crash Safety Center. "Kettering's role in the testing was to develop the test procedures so they could get real world testing scenarios."

null: Follow us on Twitter

Designers rigged the crash sled to simulate a car door that had just been hit from the outside, causing the sheet metal to cave in on the crash test dummy.

"The door comes in at 20 miles per hour," Brelin-Fornari said.

This crash test dummy was used more than 100 times by the people from Dorel. There are sensors in the head and chest that help researchers gather the information they need. As a result, Dorel engineers came up with an air-filled cushion that is mounted near the head of a child riding in the safety seat.

They call it Safety 1st Complete Air. "As I'm hitting it, it's going to be pushing the air and energy out and away," explained one researcher.

The test definitely shows the Air Protect System will reduce the risk of injury to children's heads in side impact crashes.

The Complete Air seat will be available around September 1 only at Toys-R-Us and Babies-R-Us stores. It will sell for about $250.

Nearly 300 children a year in the United States are killed by side impacts. If we can reduce the risk of injury to anyone of those children, it's a good thing," Brelin-Fornari told ABC12's Randy Conat.

The seat is advertised as being suitable for infants and children who weigh as much as 50 pounds.

Brelin-Fornari is understandably delighted with the role she and Kettering played in the product's development. "We're very proud to be able to work with Dorel in the development of this."

Kettering and Dorel have passed along their findings to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.