Euro NCAP Approves the Humanetics aPLI Legform for Evaluating Advanced Pedestrian Protection
Following a stringent review by the Euro NCAP Secretariat and TWG members, the Humanetics advanced Pedestrian Legform Impactor (aPLI) has been approved for use and inclusion in TB 029, the technical bulletin that provides an overview of their certified suppliers and the main test equipment and software used in
official Euro NCAP testing. As a certified supplier to Euro NCAP, Humanetics provides safety engineers with dependable and sophisticated instruments for use in both occupant and pedestrian protection testing.
Euro NCAP is the European New Car Assessment Programme, a voluntary car safety performance assessment organization founded in 1996 and based in Leuven, Belgium. Euro NCAP uses a five-star safety rating system to help consumers compare vehicles and help them identify the safest choices across Europe.
The aPLI is the latest pedestrian crash testing tool representing a 50th percentile male leg which simulates the flexible nature of the human leg bones and is used for the assessment of knee, upper and lower leg injuries.
In response to increasing pedestrian and road vehicle collisions resulting in escalating injuries and fatalities, today’s Global NCAP programs asses all new vehicles for pedestrian protection using an instrumented Flex PLI legform.
As a certified supplier to Euro NCAP, Humanetics provides safety engineers with dependable and sophisticated instruments for use in both occupant and pedestrian protection testing.
The aPLI improves on the Flex-PLI’s groundbreaking technology by adding a Simplified Upper Body Part (SUBP) which adds ballast to the leg to simulate the human upper-body mass for enhanced kinematics. The SUBP also allows for femur injury to be assessed and provides for the placement of a Data Acquisition System (DAS). To make the aPLI’s biofidelity and sensitivity more human-like, the leading experts in the field led by JSAE and the ISO/TC22/SC36/WG5&WG6 working group also redesigned the knee, rerouted ligament cables, and incorporated a polyurethane flesh to further help with mass distribution and biofidelic response.
A new aPLI Build Level was introduced in April of 2020 and adds a bumper to create initial negative femur bending. The aPLI’s new simplified design features are paramount to enhance repeatability & durability and to establish the leg for oblique impacts against a wider test area.
The aPLI has a standard instrumentation count of 18 channels of strain, angular rate, displacement, and acceleration measurement capability with the potential to incorporate additional channels. Humanetics also offers a fully validated aPLI FE model conforming to the new build level.
Humanetics is committed to advancing safety technology for both occupants and vulnerable road users including pedestrians. The aPLI represents years of effort to produce a new generation of precise testing devices as part of our Advanced ATD program.
The October 2022 TB 029 Suppliers List and Appendices I & II (containing the June 2023 aPLI update) are available on the Euro NCAP website.
Learn how the aPLI can help with pedestrian safety testing by watching our On-Demand Webinar
Mark Brown
Mark is the Product Marketing Manager at Humanetics Safety and works closely with Engineering and Sales to develop and refine content that is both useful and informative for our industry. With over two decades of experience in crash test dummy product Quality, Technical, Sales, and Marketing, Mark produces a wide range of media and publications including our service bulletins, webinars, editorial articles, and contributes to our marketing collateral.