Vehicle Tests and Simulation Tools for Rollover Sensing

One important topic in future automotive safety systems will be a better protection of the occupants in rollover situations. Convenient systems are belt pretensioner and head airbags and, for convertibles, rollover bars. For an in-time detection of an imminent rollover and an activation of these safety systems by an electronic control unit there can be used different sensors, for example angular rate sensors, accelerometers, tilt switches. All kinds of these sensors were used in a vehicle test program in order to find out the best sensor architecture for this purpose.

By use of a rotation table which is controlled according to the signals of the angular velocity sampled in these tests the rotation of the vehicle about the longitudinal axis can be simulated. This test equipment is used for the validation of trigger algorithms for the safety systems.