PotvoR - Reduction of injuries through pre-triggered restraint systems

In the near future road cars will be able to detect possible collisions before they happen. Then it will be possible to avoid some accidents by specific actions of driver assistance systems. If a crash is unpreventable, the passenger can be prepared for the collision during the residual time. This project determines the potential for a reduction of the Injury-Risk for car-occupants through an airbag deployment considerably before t0. The goal is to demonstrate possible improvements in order to stimulate the further development of PreCrash-Sensors. Through the pre-crash deployment of the airbag various advantages for the occupant can be obtained: If the airbag is fired before t0 it can be designed significantly bigger in comparison to conventional trigger times because the passenger hasnt moved forward. Thereby a very early coupling of the passenger and resulting low loads are achieved. Another advantage is that the airbag can be inflated much more slowly due to much more time available. So the deployment of the bag can be performed in a gentle way which leads to a less aggressive system that promises improvements especially in OOP-Situations. There is still no future perspective for a hundred percent detection rate of PreCrash-Sensors, so the Airbag-System will additionally be designed for conventional trigger times. It is mandatory that in case of a failure of the PreCrash-Sensors the occupant is protected at least as well as in the todays series-production vehicle. This analysis investigating the potential of precrash activated airbags is based on multibody-simulations with different dummies and crash-scenarios. The results of the simulations are verified by principle tests and full scale sled tests.