Abstract: Lower extremity injuries occurred frequently in frontal crashes.The risk of lower extremity injury can be effectively reduced by taking use of energy absorbing during pedal fracture.However,the accelerator pedal was often neglected or replaced by a simple rigid body in simulations.As a result,the research cannot reflect the real situation.Thus,a precise accelerator pedal finite element model was established.According to the force transmission between foot and pedal,the pedal was fixed in two methods in the experiments.The model was validated by comparing the experiments and simulations under different conditions.To improve the relativities between the experiments and simulations,a series of influence factors are discussed,such as element type,element size and the formula of integration.Finally,the relativities were raised up to more than 90% under all conditions.

Key words: accelerator pedal, experiment, finite element model, computer simulation