Integrity Assessment of Airbag Housings

A substantial prerequisite for the performance of airbag modules during collisions is the structural integrity of all module components. This paper focuses on integrity assessment of passenger airbag module housings during deployment and the use of adequate simulation methods for this task. In particular an approach is discussed that reduces the required number of hardware test loops by using a complete model of the module including details like the folded airbag and IP. Instead of identification hardware tests, the proposed method allows to calculate the loading parameters of the housing directly within the simulation. This increases accuracy for the analysis of various setups and parameter changes. Mandatory for this approach are efficient airbag folding, realized by pre-simulation, and a high level of predictability of the deployment behavior, where fluid structure interaction methods are applied, i.e. CPM in LS-Dyna.