Evaluation on substitution of conventional azide based fuel materials with an alternate one in an airbag system – A review

Abstract

In an automobile vehicle, azide based conventional fuels are used for airbag inflation. The exposure of sodium azide leads to several health issues such as hypotension, indigestion, breathing difficulties, eyes burning, itching, drowsiness etc. This made the focus shifted towards finding out a non azide fuel suitable for an airbag inflation. This paper discusses about the selection and procedural implementation of a suitable non azide fuel for an airbag gas generants by forming a ranking matrix. Ranking matrix were formed based on the economic and hazardous parameters such as toxicity, instability and inflammability factors. The detailed literature survey on the different non-azide fuels available and performance evaluation techniques showed that Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Thermogravimetry (TG), Accelerating Rate Calorimetry (ARC) were used for evaluating the thermal parameters such as peak pressure, heat of formation, burning rate, pressure rate and decomposition temperature. The review was found useful to select various modelling and numerical techniques proposed by researchers for calculating the kinetic parameters such as activation energy, pre-exponential factor and reaction rate. These performance parameters of the conventional azide fuels can be kept as a bench mark while evaluating the non azide fuel. This review aids the researchers to choose a non azide fuel based on ranking matrix and to carry out performance analysis for a possible substitution of conventional azide based airbag fuels.