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A tripped rollover is one of several types of rollover initiations. Developing a curtain airbag system for occupant protection in tripped rollovers requires the knowledge of the occupant kinematics prior to tripping. As a vehicle experiences lateral deceleration prior to the trip initiation, the unrestrained dummy head is already in motion and may be close to the vehicle interior or at the side glass plane. If the vehicle is equipped with a curtain airbag system, it may be difficult to trigger the curtain deployment prior to the dummy interacting with the vehicle side structure due to the degree of difficulty in discriminating between a roll and no roll situation early enough in the event. For such conditions, a curtain airbag restraint system should be designed so that it deploys and positions itself properly as the dummy head is approaching the side glass plane or in the deployment zone.

A driver airbag module has been developed with single stage inflator in an attempt to determine the 05th% ATD measured dummy injury response (“MDIR”) in out-of-position scenarios (two NHTSA positions). Through computer simulations, dynamic MDIRs for in-position 05th%ile and 50th%ile dummies were evaluated as well. It typically takes many design iterations to finalize a driver side module configuration to meet FMVSS208 regulatory conditions. Some typical parameters are tear seam cover design, cushion folding pattern and inflator output. In this paper, a Taguchi design of experiments was used to evaluate the influence of module design parameters. A MDIR comparison between a proposed new driver airbag module with a single stage inflator and a baseline module with a dual stage inflator was made not only for out-of-position tests, but also in-position crash simulations.