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The recent real-world experience with the frontal airbags and their sometimes unfortunate interaction with small size adults and children led to the analytical efforts and the results reported in this paper. The focus of this paper is an analytical study investigating the side impact protection performance of side airbags in interaction with, out-of-position occupants. The study evaluates interaction of the two extreme size occupants including a 3 year old child, and a small 5th percentile adult female. The objective is to identify any potential problems with the side impact airbags in real world scenarios. To date, a considerable amount of research has been invested in developing and evaluating occupant protection systems for both frontal and side impacts. However, the majority of this research has focused on the 50th percentile adult male occupant size, who is properly seated in his seat.

This paper describes a computer modeling system and its application in evaluating several vehicle designs for side impact protection of children and small adults.