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. 2019 Apr 2;18(1):40.
doi: 10.1186/s12938-019-0652-3.

On the protective capacity of a safety vest for the thoracic injury caused by falling down

Jing Li  1 , Duanduan Chen  1 , Xiaoying Tang  2 , Hanjun Li  1
Affiliations

On the protective capacity of a safety vest for the thoracic injury caused by falling down

Jing Li et al. Biomed Eng Online. .

Abstract

Background: Aged people all over the world are prone to fall down accidentally and be injured with fracture, such as the rib fracture. To protect the elderly, the safety vest has been developed to protect them from being injured when falling down. To effectively protect the elderly, more analysis on the protective capacity of a safety vest under different situation are needed.

Results: Herein, a finite element model based on the computed tomography CT scanning data of a Chinese old female was built, and then used to simulate the process of falling down at different velocities. Analysis and comparison were done on the maximum shear stress, kinetic energy curves and internal energy curves with and without safety vest. The maximum shear stress indicated that the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) 2+ injury risks of rib were 8%, 100% and 100% at the velocities of 1.5 m/s, 2.0 m/s and 2.5 m/s, respectively. The corresponding risks were lowered to 0%, 0% and 60% by the vest, respectively. Furthermore, the vest could absorb the internal energy resulted by the deformation of the thoracic osseous tissue by about 20%, thus decreasing the shear stress and the injury risk.

Conclusion: It is concluded that the safety vest decreases the injury risk when the elderly fall down, thus protects them from being injured.

Keywords: Elderly; Fall; Finite element method; Safety vest.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
a 2D CT image of the thoracic tissue and b the final geometry
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Final mesh of the thorax (left) and the simplified safety vest (right)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Nominal stress versus strain relationship in the foam core material model
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Maximum shear stress plot with and without vest at different velocities. a 1.5 m/s, b 2.0 m/s and c 2.5 m/s without vest, at velocity of d 1.5 m/s, e 2.0 m/s and f 2.5 m/s with vest
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Kinetic energy curves and Internal energy curves with and without vest at different velocities. a The KE curves and b IE curves for the models without vest, and c KE curves and d IE curves for the models with vest
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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