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Numerical simulation of the airbag can be used as a powerful tool in the development of a SIR (Supplemental Inflatable Restraint) system leading to an optimized design and to reduce the development time. However, modeling flattened or folded airbags from the 3D CAD geometry and simulating exact airbag shapes during the deployment is a very complex problem. Especially for the passenger side airbags, generating a flattened and folded mesh from the CAD geometry of the airbag is a very difficult task as these airbags are made of non-developable surface and can not be flattened easily without introducing secondary folds, wrinkling or distortions of mesh. A novel approach called as Initial Metric methodology effectively addresses these problems. The initial metric method uses two types of meshes, A CAD reference mesh and a mapped or a scaled (compressed) mesh constructed from a CAD mesh of the airbag. In the simulation, mapped or scaled (compressed) mesh is used for airbag inflation.

There are many mechanisms for ankle injury to front seat occupants involved in automotive impacts. This study addresses injuries to the ankle joint involving inversion or eversion, in particular at high rates of loading such as might occur in automotive accidents. Injuries included unilateral malleolar fractures and ligament tears, and talus and calcaneous avulsions. Twenty tests have been performed so far, two of them using Hybrid III lower leg and the rest using cadaveric specimens. The specimens were loaded dynamically on the bottom of the foot via a pneumatic cylinder in either an inversion or eversion direction at fixed dorsiflexion and plantarflexion angles. The applied force and accelerations have been measured as well as all the reaction forces and moments. High-speed film was used to obtain the inversiordeversion angle of the foot relative to the tibia and for following ligament stretch.