Abstract
Objective: The future mobility challenges lead to considering new safety systems to protect vehicle passengers in non-standard and complex seating configurations. The objective of this study is to assess the performance of a brand new safety system called nanobag and to compare it to traditional airbag performance in the frontal sled test scenario. Methods: The nanobag technology is assessed in the frontal crash test scenario and compared with the standard airbag by numerical simulation. The previously identified material model is used to assemble the nanobag numerical model. The paper exploits an existing validated human body model to assess the performance of the nanobag safety system. Using both the new nanobag and the standard airbag, the sled test numerical simulations with the variation of human bodies were performed in 30 km/h and 50 km/h frontal impacts. Results: The sled test results for both the nanobag and the standard airbag based on injury criteria show a good and acceptable performance of the nanobag safety system compared to the traditional airbag. Conclusions: The results show that the nanobag system’s performance is comparable to the standard airbag’s, which means that, thanks to the design, the nanobag safety system has high potential and an extended application for multi-directional protection against impact.
Highlights
The vehicle safety is as old as mobility started
The main aim here is to assess the performance of the nanobag compared to the standard airbag, and it is certified for a standard seating configuration only
The head injury risk is evaluated with the head injury criteria (HIC) [1] and brain criteria (BrIC and UBrIC) for soft tissue injury criteria [23,24,25], and neck injury is tested via neck injury criteria (Nij) [1,26]
Summary
The vehicle safety is as old as mobility started. The improvement of vehicle occupants’safety was approached in different ways, where all of them led to enforcement through vehicle manufacturers by embedding safety standards into legislation and policies. The airbag is an inherent safety system in almost all road vehicles, protecting passengers in frontal and side impacts, but special airbag systems mitigate injury to other parts of the human body (knee, chest, etc.). Non-traditional seating configurations in autonomous vehicles and complex crash scenarios including multi-directional impacts are to be considered [3,4,5] in future automatic vehicles. This study is testing a new restrain system that can find its benefit in these non-standard seating configurations, where standard airbags can lose their performance. Nanobag technology needs to be tested and certified firstly in the standard seating position. The main aim here is to assess the performance of the nanobag compared to the standard airbag, and it is certified for a standard seating configuration only. Only the standard seating configuration and frontal impact are considered in this study
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