Innovative passive and active countermeasures for near side crash safety

Abstract

This research presents six simultaneous innovative occupant near side lateral impact protection concepts, including a dynamic door, a high-volume side airbag, a large external airbag that covers doors, sill and B-pillar of the struck vehicle and other concepts for increasing the distance between the occupant and the door panel (active armrest, inflatable door beam and moving seat). All systems are based on pre-crash detection of the impact and are activated as soon as 80 ms before the impact. This paper details the task of integrating these systems into a vehicle using finite element models, sled tests and full scale crash tests.

Keywords:

• side impact
• pre-crash
• external airbag
• seat
• pyrotechnic
• lateral protection

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial (CDTI) for funding this research project. The presented research was part of the ADAPTA project, included in the CENIT Spanish research programme under identification number CEN 20081031. We are also indebted to Fundación CIDAUT and the project partners TRW, SEAT, Grupo Antolin, Gestamp, Anafocus, Elecnor Deimos and Magom for their cooperation. We are also deeply grateful to Dr Greg Shaw, Senior Scientist at the Center for Applied Biomechanics (University of Virginia), for his scientific contribution editing the paper and also for his guidance and support.