• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.128-136
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• 2003

In today's design trend of vehicle structure, crush zone is fiequently reinforced by adding a box-shaped sub-frame in order to avoid an excessive deformation against a high-speed offset barrier such as EU Directive 96/97 EC, IIHS offset test. That kind of vehicle structure design results in a relatively monotonic crash pulse for airbag ECU(Electronic Control Unit) located at non-crush zone. As for an angular crash event, the measured crash signal using a single-axis accelerometer in a longitudinal direction is usually weaker than that of frontal barrier crash. Therefore, it is not so easy task to achieve a satisfactory crash discrimination performance for offset and angular crash events. In this paper, we introduce a new crash discrimination algorithm using an electronic X-Y 2-axis accelerometer in order to improve crash discrimination performance especially for those crash events. The proposed method uses a crash signal in lateral direction(Y-axis) as well as in longitudinal direction(X-axis). A crash severity measure obtained from Y-axis acceleration is used to improve the discrimination between fire and no-fire events. The result obtained by the proposed measure is logically ORed with an existing algorithm block using X-axis crash signal. Simulation and pulse injection test have been conducted to verify the performance of proposed algorithm by using real crash data of a 2,000cc passenger vehicle.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.129-135
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• 2013

There is not enough absorption space in the side of a vehicle so injuries to a passenger are higher compared to frontal impact injuries. For the protection of the passenger in the event of a side impact, vehicle regulations and new car assessment program(NCAP) are implemented all over the world. However, passive safety such as absorption technology of vehicle body itself is limited due to the narrow space of the side part. At the present time, it is well known that a side airbag including a curtain airbag is the most effective system to protect the passenger during a side impact. In this study, optimum design of the curtain airbag is carried out to reduce Head Injury Criterion(HIC) of the passenger. Based on crashworthiness simulation, an orthogonal array is selected based on the defined design variables, the response surfaces are generated from the orthogonal array and optimization is conducted with the surfaces.