• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.108-117
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• 2003

Development of advanced restraint system challenges both restraint and automobile manufacturers to come up with proper airbag design to reduce occupant out-of-position related injury. The important component of the advanced restraint system is the multi stage inflator. The multi stage inflator can independently control two or more airbag inflation stages to maximize occupant protection. The objective of this research is to develop relationship between airbag inflation characteristics, the occupant positions and the airbag design variables. The tests are conducted using five kinds of inflators, two kinds of airbag cushion folding methods and two kinds of tear lines. In the case of inflator, the out-of-position tests are performed with a traditional inflator, a depowered inflator and a dual stage inflator. And the efficiency and injury mechanism are evaluated by analyzing the injury pulses and values. Using this relationship, airbag design guideline is established for airbag aggressivity thresholds and the risk of injury is identified according to occupant positions.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.28 no.10
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• pp.1189-1195
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• 2011

For side airbag, the pipe type inflators have been wide used while the disk type inflators have been used for front airbag. For helping to prevent injury and death the airbag inflator system should be design with great care. The present study deal with optimizing the design of side airbag inflator by finite element analysis and design of experiment method. An optimization process was integrated to determine the optimum design variable values related to the side airbag inflator. Free shape optimization method has been carried out to find a optimal shape on an side airbag inflator model. Optimization of the air bag inflator was successfully developed using Sharpe optimization was carried out to find a new geometry. The improved results compared to the base design specification were achieved from design of experiment and optimization.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.08a
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• pp.407-408
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• 2006

Passenger safety is one of the most important considerations in the purchase of an automobile. A curtain-type air bag is increasingly adapted in deluxe cars for protecting passengers from the danger of side clash. Inflator housing is a main part of the curtain-type air bag system for supplying high-pressure gases to pump up the air bag-curtain. Although the inflator housing is fundamental in designing a curtain-type air bag system, flow information on the inflator housing is very limited. In this study, we measured instantaneous velocity fields of a high-speed flow ejecting from the inflator housing using a dynamic PIV system. From the velocity field data measured at a high frame-rate, we evaluated the variation of the mass flow rate with time. From the instantaneous velocity fields of flow ejecting from the airbag inflator housing in the initial stage, we can see a flow pattern of broken shock wave front and its downward propagation. The flow ejecting from the inflator housing was found to have large velocity fluctuations and the maximum velocity was about 700m/s. The velocity of high-speed flow was decreased rapidly and the duration of high-speed flow over 400m/s was maintained only to 30ms. After 100ms, there was no perceptible flow.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.53-62
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• 2010

An airbag is composed of housing assembly, door assembly, cushion assembly, and an inflator. The inflator is the essential part that generates gas for airbag. When an airbag is activated, it effectively absorbs the crash energy of the passenger by inflating a cushion. In this study, tank tests were performed with newly synthesized propellants with various compositions, and the results are compared with the numerical results. In the simulation of inflator, a zonal model has been adopted which consisted of four zones of flow regions: combustion chamber, filter, gas plenum, and discharge tank. Each zone was described by the conservation equations with specified constitutive relations for gas. The pressure and temperature of each zone of the inflator were calculated and analyzed and the results were compared with the tank test data. In the zone of discharge tank the pressure quickly rose, the pattern of pressure curve was very similar to the pressure curve of real test. And in zone 1 & 2 & 3 the mass of products was increased and decreased with time. In zone 4, the mass of products was increased with time like real inflator. From the similarity of pressure curve in zone 4 and closed bomb calculation the modeled results are well correlated with the experimental values.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.988-995
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• 2020

Air gun shock systems are commonly used as alternative explosion energy sources for underwater explosion (UNDEX) shock tests owing to their low cost and environmental impact. The airbag inflator of automotive airbag systems is also very useful to generate extremely rapid underwater gas release in labscale tests. To overcome the restrictions on the very small computational time step owing to the very fine fluid mesh around the nozzle hole in the explicit integration algorithm, and also the absence of a commercial solver and software for gas UNDEX of airbag inflator, an idealized airbag inflator and fluid mesh modeling technique was developed using nozzle holes of relatively large size and several small TNT charges instead of gas inside the airbag inflator. The objective of this study is to validate the results of an UNDEX response analysis of one and two idealized airbag inflators by comparison with the results of shock tests in a small water tank. This comparison was performed using the multi-material Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation and fluid-structure interaction algorithm. The number, size, vertical distance from the nozzle outlet, detonation velocity, and lighting times of small TNT charges were determined. Through mesh size convergence tests, the UNDEX response analysis and idealized airbag inflator modeling were validated.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.201-210
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• 2018

An airbag is an essential automotive component used in all kinds of vehicles such as an internal combustion engine and an electric motor vehicle and is used to minimize the damage of an occupant in the event of an accident. Airbag-related parts are being monopolized by a small number of foreign companies around the world. In this situation, it is necessary to develop and research the airbag-related part molding technology for expansion of the domestic airbag-related market and corporate export. As a part of this research, we have developed a mold for airbag inflator cap. The development consists of three steps which are the design of components, analysis of the design and verification of it. In the case of the design, the transfer type mold was designed for the multi-cylindrical shaped feature. Analysis was then conducted on the design. By examining the results of analysis, changing features and numbers of punches and dies were added in the analysis and repeatedly analyzed. After the addition, proper dimensions from the analysis were achieved, and prototypes were practically produced and verified. In the case of prototype verification, Pressurizing Burst Test was conducted on the existing products and the prototype. By comparing the results of the test, the possibility of replacing the existing product of the airbag inflator cap is presented in this paper.

• 한국가시화정보학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.12a
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• pp.17-20
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• 2006

Passenger safety is fundamental factor in automobile. Among much equipment for passenger safety, the air bag system is the most fundamental and effective device. Beside of the front air bag system which installed on most of all automobiles, a curtain-type air bag is increasingly adapted in deluxe cars fur protecting passengers from the danger of side clash. Curtain type airbag system consists of inflator housing, fill hose, curtain airbag. Inflator housing is a main part of the curtain-type air bag system for supplying high-pressure gases to deploy the air bag-curtain. Fill hose is a passageway to carry the gases from inflator housing to each part of curtain airbag. Therefore, it is very important to design the vent holes of fill hose for good performance of airbag deployment. But, the flow information from vent holes of fill hose is very limited. In this study, we measured instantaneous velocity fields of a high-speed flow ejecting from the vent holes of fill hose using a dynamic PIV system. From the velocity Held data measured at a high frame-rate, we evaluated the variation of the mass flow rate with time. From the instantaneous velocity fields of flow ejecting from the vent holes in the initial stage, we can see a flow pattern of wavy motion and fluctuation. The flow ejecting from the vent holes was found to have very high velocity fluctuations and the maximum velocity was about 480m/s at 4-vent hole region. From the mass flow rate with time, the accumulated flow of 4-vent hole has occupied about 70% of total flow rate.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.148-156
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• 2003

Many car manufacturers have frequently adopted an aggressive inflator and a lower threshold speed for airbag deployment in order to meet an injury requirement for unbolted occupant at high speed crash test. Consequently, today's occupant safety restraint system has a weakness due to an airbag induced injury at low speed crash event. This paper proposes a new crash algorithm to improve the weakness by suppressing airbag deployment at low speed crash event in case of belted condition. The proposed algorithm consists of two major blocks-crash severity algorithm and deployment logic block. The first block decides crash severity with two levels by means of velocity and crash energy calculation from acceleration signal. The second block implemented by simple AND/OR logic combines the crash severity level and seat belt status information to generate firing commands for airbag and belt pretensioner. Furthermore, it can be extended to adopt additional sensor information from passenger presence detection sensor and safing sensor. A simulation using real crash data for a 1,800cc passenger vehicle has been conducted to verify the performance of proposed algorithm.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.22-27
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• 2019

Bikers can be subjected to accidents during their bicycling. Helmets are only good, if any, for their head protection. A wearable airbag can protect the human neck area if it is properly designed. This airbag system is composed of an inflater and an airbag. The inflater contains a pressurized gas cylinder and a piercing device. The airbag is an inflatable fabric surrounding the human neck. When a bicycle accident happens, a sensor captures the motion of the biker and a microcomputer sends a signal to open a valve in the inflator to supply the pressurized gas to the airbag. An important issue of this system is that the airbag should be quickly inflated to protect the human neck. This paper deals with the airbag inflation time simulation and some issues to design a wearable airbag system. Also, a prototype was tested to show its feasibility using a human dummy mounted on a running cart.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.5696-5703
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• 2012

In this study, the characteristics of filter that make up the automotive airbag system were analyzed. The gas pressure change of airbag is directly impacted by the filter. However, it is uncertain how much the design factors of filter affect the pressure of airbag. And it is difficult to access the pressure loss coefficient in the respect of characteristics of the airbag filter in the simulation method. To solve this problem, this study suggests pressure loss coefficient of the filter using simulation analysis. But it is impossible to interpret a sudden increase of pressure such as airbag filter. To solve this problem, by applying interpolation and scale down method, analysis was processed. Also, through the simulation interpretation of airbag filter's pressure loss coefficient, the guidelines for the filter design could be suggested.