DEVELOPMENT OF A PNEUMATIC AIRBAG DEPLOYMENT APPARATUS FOR STUDY OF AIRBAG DEPLOYMENT CHARACTERISTICS

摘要

Nowadays various airbags are installed in most vehicles for passengers' safety and many studies have been carried out to develop an airbag with high reliability and efficiency. In present study, the economical airbag deploying system was developed to substitute a real airbag system, and to compensate for theoretical results. The Pneumatic Airbag Deployment Apparatus (PADA) that uses high compressed air was made to operate the airbag deploying experiments safely and economically. The performance of the PADA was verified by a series of experiments such as free deploying test, tank test, and the measurement of pressure distribution on the plate. So various experiments about airbag deployment could be accomplished by just regulating pressure and volume of the driver, and membrane thickness of the PADA.The internal pressure history of airbag that is deploying has the peak value, 583.2 kPa, at door opening time at 7.92 ms. Also the maximum pressure in measuring plate is 6.9 Mpa and the average leading edge speed is 32.9 m/s while the airbag pressure was decreasing. So it was confirmed that the force due to kinetic pressure of the airbag was much higher than static airbag pressure. The airbag was deployed asymmetrically through the non-uniformed pressure distribution was captured. The PADA will be useful to furnish the fundamental data of airbag deploying characteristics to initial design stage.