Recently, the automotive industry has become more interested in knee injury, particularly in the application and development of knee airbag modules in vehicles to achieve a good rating during EuroNCAP and IIHS tests. Also, EuroNCAP and IIHS press the automotive industry to equip vehicles with knee airbag modules for occupant safety improvement in barrier tests. (1)
Therefore, an invisible knee airbag module has been independently developed through design, simulation, static deployment tests and dynamic knee impact tests. A knee airbag module development process has been established and test results that were obtained from the development process are presented. Also, some design considerations for invisible knee airbag module development are discussed in this paper.
A knee airbag module, which has been changed to match the IP lower panel shape and packaging specific vehicle environment, will be developed and produced in the near future.