• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.53-62
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• 2010

An airbag is composed of housing assembly, door assembly, cushion assembly, and an inflator. The inflator is the essential part that generates gas for airbag. When an airbag is activated, it effectively absorbs the crash energy of the passenger by inflating a cushion. In this study, tank tests were performed with newly synthesized propellants with various compositions, and the results are compared with the numerical results. In the simulation of inflator, a zonal model has been adopted which consisted of four zones of flow regions: combustion chamber, filter, gas plenum, and discharge tank. Each zone was described by the conservation equations with specified constitutive relations for gas. The pressure and temperature of each zone of the inflator were calculated and analyzed and the results were compared with the tank test data. In the zone of discharge tank the pressure quickly rose, the pattern of pressure curve was very similar to the pressure curve of real test. And in zone 1 & 2 & 3 the mass of products was increased and decreased with time. In zone 4, the mass of products was increased with time like real inflator. From the similarity of pressure curve in zone 4 and closed bomb calculation the modeled results are well correlated with the experimental values.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.988-995
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• 2020

Air gun shock systems are commonly used as alternative explosion energy sources for underwater explosion (UNDEX) shock tests owing to their low cost and environmental impact. The airbag inflator of automotive airbag systems is also very useful to generate extremely rapid underwater gas release in labscale tests. To overcome the restrictions on the very small computational time step owing to the very fine fluid mesh around the nozzle hole in the explicit integration algorithm, and also the absence of a commercial solver and software for gas UNDEX of airbag inflator, an idealized airbag inflator and fluid mesh modeling technique was developed using nozzle holes of relatively large size and several small TNT charges instead of gas inside the airbag inflator. The objective of this study is to validate the results of an UNDEX response analysis of one and two idealized airbag inflators by comparison with the results of shock tests in a small water tank. This comparison was performed using the multi-material Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation and fluid-structure interaction algorithm. The number, size, vertical distance from the nozzle outlet, detonation velocity, and lighting times of small TNT charges were determined. Through mesh size convergence tests, the UNDEX response analysis and idealized airbag inflator modeling were validated.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.22-27
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• 2019

Bikers can be subjected to accidents during their bicycling. Helmets are only good, if any, for their head protection. A wearable airbag can protect the human neck area if it is properly designed. This airbag system is composed of an inflater and an airbag. The inflater contains a pressurized gas cylinder and a piercing device. The airbag is an inflatable fabric surrounding the human neck. When a bicycle accident happens, a sensor captures the motion of the biker and a microcomputer sends a signal to open a valve in the inflator to supply the pressurized gas to the airbag. An important issue of this system is that the airbag should be quickly inflated to protect the human neck. This paper deals with the airbag inflation time simulation and some issues to design a wearable airbag system. Also, a prototype was tested to show its feasibility using a human dummy mounted on a running cart.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.439-446
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• 2017

This paper deals with an experimental study of the dynamics of an underwater bubbles and shock waves, generated by rapid underwater release of highly compressed gas. Aribag inflators, which are used for automobile's airbag system, are used to generate the extremely-rapid underwater gas release. Experimental studies of the complex underwater bubble dynamics as well as underwater shock wave were carried out in a specifically designed cylindrical water tank. The water tank is equipped with a high-speed camera and pressure sensors. The high-speed camera was used to capture the expansion and collapse of the gas bubble created by inflators, while pressure sensors was used to measure the underwater shock propagation and magnitudes. The experimental results were compared against the results of explosion of pentolite explosive. Several physical phenomena that has been observed and discussed, which are different from the explosive underwater explosion.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.5696-5703
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• 2012

In this study, the characteristics of filter that make up the automotive airbag system were analyzed. The gas pressure change of airbag is directly impacted by the filter. However, it is uncertain how much the design factors of filter affect the pressure of airbag. And it is difficult to access the pressure loss coefficient in the respect of characteristics of the airbag filter in the simulation method. To solve this problem, this study suggests pressure loss coefficient of the filter using simulation analysis. But it is impossible to interpret a sudden increase of pressure such as airbag filter. To solve this problem, by applying interpolation and scale down method, analysis was processed. Also, through the simulation interpretation of airbag filter's pressure loss coefficient, the guidelines for the filter design could be suggested.