Crash Dectector Development

Within the past several years many crash detector concepts have been evaluated for use in automobiles. The experience gained in the process of detector development has lead to several useful new design techniques. In this paper, under the general categories of design methods and design verification procedures, special applications of failure mode analysis, design perturbation analysis and inadvertent actuation prediction techniques are discussed. The design of rolamite acceleration-time detectors and the concept of fail safe and self-diagnostic design are presented as applications of specific methods.