Expanding Restraint Sensing System Discrimination

The absolute severity of a vehicular crash cannot be determined until the crash event is complete. However, airbag sensing systems are required to discriminate the severity of a crash event in the first milliseconds of an impact. Future airbag systems will require even more discrimination capability than current systems to provide separate deployment thresholds for advanced technologies such as multi-staged airbags and pre-tensioners and threshold shifting for belted and unbelted occupants. A prototype advanced sensing system has been tested to improve the severity measurement of an impact and offer multiple deployment thresholds without increasing the time required for event discrimination. Results of crash tests and the system's performance are discussed.