Passenger airbags are designed to protect against head and chest injuries in case of a frontal collision. Their full effect of the airbags is achieved in combination with the seat belt. In case of an accident, the airbag should not form a solid obstacle when the head and upper body collide with it. Instead, the upper body of the human should force out the gas through vents in the airbag. This leads to the effect of soft landing.The passenger airbag has a volume up to 150 liters depending on the size of the car. The air bag is sewn with a woven fabric and can come in different shapes and stitches depending on specific vehicle requirements.
In Finite Element (FE) simulations, the folding and inflation process of the airbag is critical. Eventually, this is the most crucial determining factor in saving lives in real world accidents. Passenger Airbag folding and deployment using FE simulation tools has always been a major challenge as it involves various sequential steps like airbag meshing, stitching, folding as per the folding sequence among others. In our experiment, we introduce a separate segment with pleat stitch in addition to the usual stitches in the airbag.
Fig 3: Images source: Google