A study was conducted by General Motors at its crash test facility located at the Milford Proving Ground. The intent of this study was to expand upon the currently available research regarding the safety belt buckle environment during full scale planar crash tests. Buckle accelerations and webbing tensions were measured and recorded to characterize, in part, buckle responses in a crash environment. Previous studies have focused primarily on the component level testing of safety belt buckles. The crash tests included a variety of vehicles, impact types, seating positions, Anthropomorphic Test Devices (ATDs), impact speeds, and impact angles. Also included were various safety belt restraint systems and pretensioner designs.
This study reports on data recorded from 100 full scale crash tests with 180 instrumented end release safety belt buckles. Acceleration measurements were obtained with tri-axial accelerometers mounted onto the buckles. The accelerations were recorded in the axial, lateral, and perpendicular axes relative to the buckle. Buckle responses were examined wherever the acceleration experienced by the buckle exceeded +/-150 g's in any of the three orthogonal axes. Belt webbing tension was also measured with load cells mounted on the lap and torso webbing.
The data are summarized by whether or not a pretensioner was deployed. This study characterizes the environment for safety belt buckles during a variety of standardized full scale vehicle planar crash test conditions. In the 100 vehicle crash tests included in this study, there were no buckle or latch plate separations.