Inflatable Restraint System Design Considerations

• Published in: Vehicle Electronics in the 90's: Proceedings of the International Congress on Transportation Electronics pp. 23 - 43
• Main Authors: Goch, S., Krause, T., Gillespie, A.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 1990
• Subjects: Accidents; Automotive engineering; Injuries; Protection; Road vehicles; Sensor phenomena and characterization; Sensor systems; Statistics; System testing; Vehicle crash testing
• ISBN: 156091047X; 9781560910473
• DOI: 10.1109/ICTE.1990.712995

Effective vehicle occupant protection is achieved by first studying the relationships among the various vehicle systems at the barrier crash event. Once defined, development then proceeds via adjusting performance by corresponding design action at the sub-system level. Where it is impossible or undesirable to achieve the desired crash performance of any given subsystem, compensatory design action can often be applied elsewhere in the vehicle to achieve the net desired effect. In the case of the airbag subsystem, the fabric bag itself and the inflator output are the primary parameters affecting tailorability to specific application. Several other design features are also available but are independent of vehicle application. The airbag occupant restraint systems represent a marriage of the constituent technologies of mechanics, pyrotechnics, and electronics. The electronics technology applied in the airbag diagnostic module and in the crash sensors will be addressed in subsequent sections of this paper.