Effectiveness analysis of a foldable booster safety seat with integrated seatbelt buckle for reducing children’s vehicle accident injury risk

Vehicle collisions may result in severe injuries to child passengers. These accidents are of concern to the automotive community; hence child restraint systems are now subjected to legislative requirements. New foldable child safety seats are a new technology that has the potential for space-saving whilst protecting children from injuries. For the first time, this paper proposes to evaluate the safety of such a foldable seat, considering multiple frontal impact directions. The research created a baseline 6-year-old HybridIII child sled test computer model, built from a correlated vehicle rear seat cabin interior environment model and including its crash pulse characteristics, in which various seat safety configurations were evaluated. A total of seven scenarios were investigated, considering no booster seat, a traditional booster seat, and a foldable booster seat, combined with different impact angles, including frontal impact (0°), near and far side impacts (15° and 30°). In each scenario, the child kinematics, seatbelt to neck interaction, head acceleration, HIC15, and chest acceleration were extracted as metrics to determine the safety effectiveness of the foldable booster seat. The study concluded that the foldable booster seat reduced the risk of neck entrapment as well as better restrained the dummy in its seat. While the head acceleration, HIC15, and the chest acceleration may slightly increase, injury responses caused by the foldable booster seat are still well within safe margins. This study suggests that foldable booster seats are innovative and practical and have the potential, pending more research, to protect children in frontal collisions better.