Advanced Frontal Crash Sensing with Peripheral Sensors

With increasing requirements for occupant safety, state of the art single point sensing airbag control units reach their limit in determining crash severity accurately and early. Single point sensing units with their main sensors inside the passenger compartment on the tunnel have to be completed with peripheral sensors in the crushable zone to allow an accurate and early determination of crash conditions and enable more sophisticated firing strategies. However, the quality of the measured acceleration signals depends strongly on the mounting location of the front sensors. The physical background of their function and optimum mounting locations based on a physical model of the initial crush of the engine compartment are discussed in this paper.