Development of a countermeasure airbag to minimise the risk of serious injury from interaction with an adjacent occupant or far-side interior in side impact crashes

In current production vehicles, passive safety systems for the protection of vehicle occupants exposed to side impact crashes have primarily been designed to reduce the risk of injury to the occupant seated on the struck side of the vehicle from interaction with the intruding structure and/or external objects. However, occupants involved in side impact crashes may also be injured due to interaction with an adjacent occupant, and a single occupant seated on the non-struck side of a vehicle may be injured due to interaction with the vehicle far-side interior. This paper reports on the results of a 32 km/h full scale vehicle-to-pole side impact crash test conducted using a small hatchback vehicle mounted on a carrier sled at 75 degrees to the direction of travel. A single WorldSID dummy was positioned on the nonstruck side of the vehicle and a countermeasure airbag was deployed on the inboard side of each front row seat. The countermeasure airbags used in this test are designed to provide side support to vehicle occupants involved in side impact crashes to limit lateral excursion and reduce the likelihood of serious injury due to interaction with an adjacent occupant or vehicle far-side interior. The results of this single occupant test are compared to results obtained from an earlier investigation of occupant-to-occupant interaction, in which the countermeasure airbags were observed to reduce the risk of head injury from occupant interaction. In the single dummy occupant test reported in this paper, the countermeasure airbags successfully prevented the dummy from interacting with the pole and intruding far-side interior of the vehicle. INTRODUCTION According to the results of analysis of NASS/CDS from 1993 to 2006 by Gabler et al in 2008, the relative risk of non-struck side driver is increased to 3.2 times when driver is with an unbelted right front passenger as compared to the belted driver [2][3]. Figure 1. Relative risk of driver in side impact crash from 1993 to 2006 NASS/CDS Relative Risk 1.083 1.303 0.929 3.215 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 Belted Unbelted Belted Unbelted Struck Side Driver Non-Struck Side Driver Crash Side to Exposed Drivers of Number Crash Side to Exposed Drivers 3 MAIS of Number Risk + = Passenger Front Right without MAIS3 of Risk Passenger Front Right with MAIS3 of Risk Risk Relative + + =