Single Point Sensing and Structural Design of Vehicles

Multi-point sensing for airbag deployment, which is widely used today, incurs costs of wiring and installation and exposes the sensor to the severe under-hood environment. Single-point sensing by a sensor packaged with the airbag can be used to avoid these problems, provided that enough of the crash pulse reaches the sensor to enable an accurate and timely decision about airbag deployment. Most present vehicles do not have appropriate structural characteristics for such sensing, especially in pole crashes and angled barrier crashes. An optimum structure would transmit information about the crash to the sensor and then yield. One component needing modification to achieve this is the bumper. Finite element analysis using DYNA3D is used to explore possible modifications to front structures to permit single-point sensing by a passenger compartment sensor. Such redesign might also improve the shape of the occupant's deceleration history.