Exploratory study of an airbag concept for a large touring motorcycle

Honda began its research on motorcycle rider protection in the 1960’s and since then has been active, along with other researchers in this field. One type of protection system a motorcycle mounted airbag system has been researched in various countries since the 1970’s. Recently, Honda has focused its motorcycle airbag research on one particular concept aimed at: reducing rider ejection speed; minimizing sensitivity to motorcycle impact angle, and motorcycle or opposing vehicle shapes; application to motorcycles which have a mass much larger than the rider mass; realizing a practicable airbag size and location ; and consideration of both the running and impact motions of motorcycles. result, it was recognized that conceiving one airbag concept that would be functional for all motorcycle types would be extremely difficult. Subsequently, efforts were focused on an airbag system for a specific, large and heavy motorcycle the GL 1500 which was seen as an apparent airbag candidate because of its size, weight and configuration. This paper describes an exploratory study of an airbag system for one specific, large motorcycle the GL 1500 and in general this study is not considered to be applicable to other sizes, types or models of motorcycle. Prototype devices intended to meet these objectives were refined by testing, and a prototype airbag system for a GL 1500 motorcycle was designed including special bag shape, inflator, cover and sensor system. The prototype system was evaluated using full scale impact tests and computer simulation procedures based on IS