The Permeability Behaviour of Various Gases through Automotive Airbag Fabrics

Abstract

An investigation is reported in which a novel dynamic gas-permeability tester built for the automotive industry was used to measure the permeability characteristics of uncoated airbag fabrics by using air, argon, and helium. A gas-penetrating pressure of 100 kPa was used for all the measurements. The parameters that were chosen to analyse the performance of the airbag fabrics were the gas velocity, the exponent of the pressure-velocity curve, and the fabric bulge height. Experimental data clearly indicate that the fastest gas velocity can be obtained with helium. However, every gas reaches a limiting velocity at a certain fabric cover factor. The exponent values appear to be influenced by the amount of fabric deformation and the physical characteristics of the gases. Some statistical analysis is applied to the experimental readings to ascertain the accuracy of the study.