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The Pelvis-Thorax Side Air Bag (PTSAB) is a typical restraint countermeasure offered for protection of occupants in the vehicle during side impact tests. Currently, the dynamic performance of PTSAB for occupant injury assessment in side impact is limited to full-vehicle evaluation and sled testing, with limited capability in computer aided engineering (CAE). The widely used CAE method for PTSAB is a flat bag with uniform pressure. The flat PTSAB model with uniform pressure has limitations because of its inability to capture airbag deployment during gap closure which results in reduced accuracy while predicting occupant responses. Hence there is a need to develop CAE capability to enhance the accuracy of prediction of occupant responses to meet performance targets in regulatory and public domain side impact tests. This paper describes a new CAE methodology for assessment of PTSAB in side impact.

This paper describes the development of a sled-to-sled test methodology to simulate the occupant responses in different side impact cart test modes. For evaluation of various inflatable restraints (Thorax SAB, Head-Thorax Combo SAB, Pelvis-Thorax Combo SAB), the simulation of ‘gap closure’ between dummy and door is desirable to achieve satisfactory SAB performance, besides obtaining good correlation of occupant responses between full-vehicle tests and sled tests. This methodology uses a combination of three sleds - Bullet, Door, and Seat sleds to simulate the entire door velocity profile in two phases - Phase I: Gap Closure till Door-Dummy contact occurs, Phase II: Door-to-Dummy contact till separation. The initial pre-crash distance between dummy-to-door trim is achieved by positioning the Door sled relative to the Seat sled (with dummy).