Development of Simulation Based Side Airbag Algorithm

The use of math-based tools has reduced the need for hardware prototyping and testing, which in turn reduces a vehicle’s development time and cost. LS-DYNA has been extensively utilized in the crashworthiness community to improve vehicle crashworthiness and to enhance occupant protection to meet institutional regulations and in-house requirements. This side airbag sensing simulation study is a part of a sequence of pilot studies to determine the possibility of using LS-DYNA to aid in side airbag sensing system development. We adopted the modeling techniques identified from previous studies and identified additional necessary enhancements to generate a high fidelity finite element vehicle model. A single vehicle model was used to simulate a suite of side impact tests, and acceleration signals from the simulations were extracted. The simulated crash signals were processed to obtain acceleration in local coordinates and eliminate the signal aliasing issue. The processed acceleration data was then given to the sensor supplier to determine the side airbag deployment times. Results from this analytical study strongly suggest that LS-DYNA may be used to aid in side airbag sensing system development.