Presented by:
KADIWALA SHAKIL M.
MAKWANA BHAVIC C.

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Airbag System
• For years, the trusty seat belt provided the sole form of passive restraint in our cars.
• There were debates about their safety, especially relating to children, but over time, much of the country adopted mandatory seat-belt laws.
• Statistics have shown that the use of seat belts has saved thousands of lives that might have been lost in collisions.
• Like seat belts, the concept of the airbag -- a soft pillow to land against in a crash -- has been around for many years.
• The first patent on an inflatable crash-landing device for airplanes was filed during World War II.
• In the 1980s, the first commercial airbags appeared in automobiles
Totally Protected
• Since model year 1998, all new cars sold in the United States have been required to have airbags on both driver and passenger sides. (Light trucks came under the rule in 1999.) To date, statistics show that airbags reduce the risk of dying in a direct frontal crash by about 30 percent. Then came seat-mounted and door-mounted side airbags. Today, some cars go far beyond having dual airbags to having six or even eight airbags. Having evoked some of the same controversy that surrounded seat-belt use in its early years, airbags are the subject of serious government and industry research and tests.
Airbag
• What an airbag wants to do is to slow the passenger's speed to zero with little or no damage. The constraints that it has to work within are huge. The airbag has the space between the passenger and the steering wheel or dashboard and a fraction of a second to work with. Even that tiny amount of space and time is valuable, however, if the system can slow the passenger evenly rather than forcing an abrupt halt to his or her motion
Airbag Inflation
• The bag itself is made of a thin, nylon fabric, which is folded into the steering wheel or dashboard or, more recently, the seat or door.
• The sensor is the device that tells the bag to inflate. Inflation happens when there is a collision force equal to running into a brick wall at 10 to 15 miles per hour (16 to 24 km per hour). A mechanical switch is flipped when there is a mass shift that closes an electrical contact, telling the sensors that a crash has occurred. The sensors receive information from an accelerometer built into a microchip
• The airbag's inflation system reacts sodium azide (NaN3) with potassium nitrate (KNO3) to produce nitrogen gas. Hot blasts of the nitrogen inflate the airbag.
How to Work
Airbag Safety Concerns
• Since the early days of auto airbags, experts have cautioned that airbags are to be used in tandem with seat belts. Seat belts were still completely necessary because airbags worked only in front-end collisions occurring at more than 10 mph (6 kph). Only seat belts could help in side swipes and crashes (although side-mounted airbags are becoming more common now), rear-end collisions and secondary impacts. Even as the technology advances, airbags still are only effective when used with a lap/shoulder seat belt.
• Move your seat to the rear as far as possible while still reaching the pedals comfortably.
• Slightly recline the back of your seat. Although car designs vary, most drivers can achieve the 10-inch distance even with the driver seat all the way forward by slightly reclining the back of the seat. If reclining the seat makes it hard to see the road, you can raise yourself up by using your car's seat-raising system (not all cars have this!) or a firm, non-slippery cushion to achieve the same effect.
• Point the airbag toward your chest, instead of your head and neck, by tilting your steering wheel downward (this only works if your steering wheel is adjustable).
For Children Experts agree that the following safety points are important:
• Children 12 and under should ride buckled up in a properly installed, age-appropriate car seat in the rear seat.
• Infants in rear-facing child seats (under one year old and weighing less than 20 pounds / 10 kg) should never ride in the front seat of a car that has a passenger-side airbag.
• If a child over one year old must ride in the front seat with a passenger-side airbag, he or she should be in a front-facing child safety seat, a booster seat or a properly fitting lap/shoulder belt, and the seat should be moved as far back as possible
The Future of Airbags
• Activities aimed at maintaining and improving the lifesaving benefits of airbags are in full swing. New NHTSA-sponsored tests use improved "dummy" injury criteria based on new knowledge and research.
• Until recently, most of the strides made in auto safety were in front and rear impacts, even though 40 percent of all serious injuries from accidents are the result of side impacts, and 30 percent of all accidents are side-impact collisions. Many carmakers have responded to these statistics (and the resulting new standards) by beefing up doors, door frames and floor and roof sections. But cars that currently offer side airbags represent the new wave of occupant protection. Engineers say that designing effective side airbags is much more difficult than designing front airbags. This is because much of the energy from a front-impact collision is absorbed by the bumper, hood and engine, and it takes almost 30 to 40 milliseconds before it reaches the car's occupant. In a side impact, only a relatively thin door and a few inches separate the occupant from another vehicle. This means that door-mounted side airbags must begin deploying in a mere five or six milliseconds!
• Volvo engineers experimented with different ways of mounting side airbags and chose seat-back installation because that protects passengers of all sizes regardless of how the seat is positioned.
• This arrangement allows them to place a triggering mechanical sensor on the sides of the seat cushions under the driver and front passenger.
• This prevents the airbag on the undamaged side of the car from inflating.
• Installing the entire airbag package in the seat-back also offers the advantage of preventing unnecessary deployments that might be caused by collisions with pedestrians or bicycles.
• It takes a collision of about 12 mph (19 kph) to trigger side airbags.
Door Airbags
How to Work Side Airbag
• In the effort to develop safer cars, it might seem as if automobile manufacturers will stuff an airbag anywhere it will fit.
• One such recent innovation, the side curtain airbag, has proven to be quite valuable and versatile.
• For several years, the side curtain airbag has earned higher safety ratings for passenger cars and minivans.
• Recently, though, automakers are finding new ways to adapt side curtain technology specifically for niche applications, especially in high-risk vehicles.
• Drivers of convertibles and SUVs, for example, currently enjoy the benefits of side curtain protection and rollover-specific security.
• Curtain airbags can also be especially helpful as sub-compacts come into vogue.
• Though structural integrity of tiny cars is often questioned by consumers and regulators, a new microcar will use curtain airbags to help protect its passengers' necks.
• If curtain airbags prove effective for rear collisions, they could be instrumental in helping improve public perception of small and efficient cars
Benefits of Side Curtain Airbags
• Some curtain airbags are specifically designed to provide protection in a rollover crash, a feature first found on the Ford Explorer [source: Edmunds.
• Airbags with this benefit feature sensors to notice if a rollover is imminent by monitoring whether the vehicle is tilting.
• When the bags deploy, they remain inflated longer than their non-rollover counterparts to compensate for the additional time vehicle occupants are in danger.
• Regular airbags deflate immediately after the impact, usually less than a second after they are deployed.
• Rollover protection curtains, by comparison, remain inflated for several seconds while people are being tossed around inside the vehicle, and are deployed with cold helium to maintain their volume for an extended period of time.
• This feature is most often found on SUVs, which are more prone to rollover incidents because of their higher center of gravity
Seat Belt Airbag
• BMW engineers have chosen door-mounted airbags.
• The door has more space, allowing for a bigger bag that provides more coverage.
• The head airbag, or Inflatable Tubular Structure (ITS), looks a little like a big sausage and, unlike other airbags, is designed to stay inflated for about five seconds to offer protection against second or third impacts.
• Working with the side airbag, the ITS is supposed to offer better protection in some side collisions.
• Another option for head protection in side impacts is the curtain airbag.
• All of this makes it pretty clear that the science of airbags is still new and under rapid development.
• You can expect many advances in this field as designers come up with new ideas and learn from real-world crash data.
• For more information on airbags and related topics, check out the links on the next page.