Evaluation and Comparison of CFD Integrated Airbag Models in LS-DYNA, MADYMO and PAM-CRASH

The interaction between the deploying airbag and the Out-Of-Position (OOP) occupants remains a challenge in occupant protection system simulations. The integration of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis into Finite Element (FE) airbag model is a helpful and important tool to address this challenge. Three major commercial crash simulation software packages widely used in the automotive safety industry, LS-DYNA, MADYMO and PAM-CRASH are in the process of implementing different approaches for airbag CFD simulation. In this study, an attempt was made to evaluate and compare the CFD integrated airbag models in these software packages. Specially designed tests were conducted to study and capture the pressure distribution inside a flat airbag and the test results were used for the evaluation. Strengths and limitations of each software package are discussed in this paper. CFD integrated airbag models provide an advantageous tool to simulate the details of airbag deployment, the information important to OOP applications but not available in the traditional uniform pressure airbag models. More efforts are required to mature the software packages for a typical industrial environment.