Research Article Vehicular Causation Factors and Conceptual Design Modifications to Reduce Aortic Strain in Numerically Reconstructed Real World Nearside Lateral Automotive Crashes Aditya Belwadi 1,2 and King H. Yang 2 1 Te Center for Injury Research and Prevention, Te Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 3535 Market Street, Suite 1150, PA 19104, USA 2 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Wayne State University, 818 W. Hancock, Detroit, MI 48201, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Aditya Belwadi; adityabn@gmail.com Received 8 September 2014; Accepted 26 March 2015 Academic Editor: Irini Doytchinova Copyright © 2015 A. Belwadi and K. H. Yang. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Aortic injury (AI) leading to disruption of the aorta is an uncommon but highly lethal consequence of trauma in modern society. Most recent estimates range from 7,500 to 8,000 cases per year from a variety of causes. It is observed that more than 80% of occupants who sufer an aortic injury die at the scene due to exsanguination into the chest cavity. It is evident that efective means of substantially improving the outcome of motor vehicle crash-induced AIs is by preventing the injury in the frst place. In the current study, 16 design of computer experiments (DOCE) were carried out with varying levels of principal direction of force (PDOF), impact velocity, impact height, and impact position of the bullet vehicle combined with occupant seating positions in the case vehicle to determine the efects of these factors on aortic injury. Further, a combination of real world crash data reported in the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN) database, Finite Element (FE) vehicle models, and the Wayne State Human Body Model-II (WSHBM-II) indicates that occupant seating position, impact height, and PDOF, in that order play, a primary role in aortic injury. 1. Introduction TRA and blunt aortic injury (BAI) are leading causes of death in high-speed impact trauma. Smith and Chang [1] reported on 387 cases of blunt traumatic death in vehicular crashes and found that aortic injury was second only to head injury as the leading cause of death. Tey also reported that nearly 85% of the victims who sustained an aortic tear died at the scene. Further, most cases of aortic injuries are accompanied by head injury, rib fractures, and/or hepatic trauma (Burkhart et al. [2]). Te mechanism of injury and the threshold for injury in these cases may be related to the particular anatomy and physiology of the aorta and the surrounding tissue. However, data from literature has shown that in lateral impacts B-pillar intrusion combined with lateral sliding of the occupant into the intruding B-pillar and associated structures are mainly responsible for aortic injury [3, 4]. Further, higher aortic strain which was seen as a primary factor for aortic tears is primarily regionalized in the peri-isthmic region, distal to the origin of the lef subclavian artery [3–7]. Te advent of sophisticated Finite Element (FE) computer models has in the recent years signifcantly aided deter- mination of injury causation. In 2005, Shah et al. refned the frst version of the human body model to develop the Wayne State Human Body Model-II (WSHBM-II) that has detailed thoracic organs including the heart, aorta, and lungs. Additional thoracic modeling, material models, and validation information can be found in Shah et al. [3]. Te WSHBM has a total of 79,471 nodes and 94,484 elements with a mass of 75.6 kilograms. Hindawi Publishing Corporation Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine Volume 2015, Article ID 269386, 9 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/269386