Title: Re-optimisation of occupant restraint system for Chinese statures by reducing airbag inflator power

Authors: Yuan Huang; Yi Huang; Peijun Ji; Qing Zhou

Addresses: State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China ' State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China ' State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China ' State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

Abstract: Current designs of automotive occupant restraint systems are only optimised for protecting some specific occupant statures to best meet requirements of crash safety regulations and consumer rating tests. This paper studies whether occupant restraint systems designed for specific statures can protect occupants with other statures. An occupant restraint system was first optimised to achieve satisfied protection for US 50th percentile male dummy and US 5th percentile female dummy. Such a restraint system can provide adequate protection to Chinese 50th percentile male dummy, but not Chinese 5th percentile female dummy. Then through a re-optimisation design, it has been demonstrated that, using an airbag inflator with lower mass flow rate, a restraint system originally optimised for the US body sizes can be modified into a restraint system for protection of the Chinese body sizes.

Keywords: occupant restraint system; driver-side; frontal collision; US population; Chinese population; airbag inflator power.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVD.2018.098268

International Journal of Vehicle Design, 2018 Vol.77 No.1/2, pp.67 - 86

Accepted: 19 Oct 2018
Published online: 07 Mar 2019 *

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