AFRY supports Axkid in developing safer child restraint
With crash simulations and computer aided engineering (CAE) expertise, AFRY has helped Axkid build a car seat that lets children travel rear-facing, and thus safer, up to seven years old – three years longer than the ISOFIX seats available on the market.
Due to a heavy and large head in relation to the body, children need extra protection in case of a collision. With a rear-facing car seat, the child’s head and neck gets protected from the strong forces compared to travelling forward facing. In fact, the risk of serious injuries is up to five times higher if the child is forward facing and they are therefore recommended to travel rear-facing for as long as possible.
Up until today, the only approved ISOFIX car seat on the market has been built for children up to age four (105 cm and 18 kilos), but the new seat from Axkid is approved for children up to seven years of age (125 cm and 23 kilos).
“Our mission was to help Axkid create a lighter seat that allows a heavier child, as well as more room for the legs. Our role was to conduct all the crash simulations to evaluate how the seat performs”, says Jonas Zachrison, Section Manager Technical Analysis at AFRY.
Through a simulation model of the seat as well as child dummies in different sizes, lots of crashes were simulated to assess the injuries in order to create a seat that meets all testing criteria.
With a rear-facing car seat, the child’s head and neck gets protected from the strong forces compared to travelling forward facing. Photo: Axkid.
Through a simulation model of the seat as well as child dummies in different sizes, lots of crashes were simulated to assess the injuries in order to create a seat that meets all testing criteria.
“The safest car seat we ever built”
”The collaboration with the CAE Team at AFRY has been a prerequisite for developing such a unique product as Axkid ONE. Due to the project’s complex requirements it has been great focus on optimising the weight and the strength of the product while keeping a lot of other parameters within specific limits”, says Daniel Lundgren, Safety and Compliance Manager at Axkid.
“In addition, we have been able to perform crash simulations in various scenarios that otherwise would have been very difficult and costly to perform physically. All these aspects have been important when creating the safest car seat we ever built”, Daniel continues.
Simon Storm is one of the CAE engineers from AFRY involved in the project.
“We started the process in 2016, and four years later we have completed a large number of computer simulations. We are happy and proud that we have contributed to develop a completely new to the market, real product that holds the highest safety standards and thus allows safer travelling for children.”
About the ISOFIX standard:
ISOFIX, or ISO 13216, is the international system for anchoring child restraints systems to vehicles.
