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Restraints systems (airbags and seat belts) have been proven to be very effective in occupant protection in crashes. Timely deployment of these devices is very essential for meeting performance requirements. Precision and reliability in restraints deployments demand selection of a robust sensing configuration that caters to the wide variations of real world. This paper highlights complexities involved in engineering of restraints sensing configurations through different case studies on vehicle programs. The paper explains the need for restraints sensing configuration optimization and well defined sensing strategies for a robust solution in real world. A methodology is discussed to achieve good discrimination between crashes of different types and severities. Virtual and physical test data collected at different stages of vehicle development is used. It is found that criteria for threshold levels in restraints sensing requires efforts to identify real world usage variations.

Automobile safety is becoming one of the important criteria for customer vehicle selection. Vehicle manufacturers have a challenging task for introducing variety of products in market in short time domain. Engineering a product for safety parameters involves many critical attributes which could affect vehicle design and styling parameters. In this context, instrument panel (hereafter referred as IP) profile, design and package are one of the aspects which affect lower extremity injuries of an occupant in a frontal crash. The occupants due to inertial properties, and shock levels move inside the passenger compartment thereby resulting into knees and lower legs contacting the IP. It is found in many cases that knee-femur injuries are higher due to improper contact area and package of hard components behind IP. This paper explains a methodology of establishing the knee impact zone using a Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) application.