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Methods and systems for numerically simulating inflation of an airbag configured with a plurality of connected flexible-boundary volumes

  • US 8,577,656 B1
  • Filed: 09/20/2011
  • Issued: 11/05/2013
  • Est. Priority Date: 09/20/2011
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method of numerically simulating inflation of an airbag configured with at least primary and secondary connected pouches, the primary pouch being inflated by an explosive blast initially, while the secondary pouch being inflated by air having flowed through one or more interconnection openings between said primary and secondary pouches, said method comprising:

  • defining a finite element analysis (FEA) model of an airbag in an initial folded configuration, said airbag having at least primary and secondary pouches connected by one or more interconnection openings, said primary and secondary pouches being represented in the FEA model by a first plurality of shell elements and a second plurality of shell elements, respectively;

    conducting a first numerical simulation of inflating the primary pouch using the FEA model according to corpuscular particle theory by interacting simulated corpuscular particles with one another and with the first plurality of shell elements, said simulated corpuscular particles being created according to an explosive blast'"'"'s strength and each of the simulated corpuscular particles being assigned with a numerical kinetic energy;

    conducting, in conjunction with the first numerical simulation, a second numerical simulation of inflating the secondary pouch using the FEA model according to control volume theory by converting numerical kinetic energy of those of the simulated corpuscular particles having flowed from the primary pouch to the secondary pouch through the interconnection openings to a uniform pressure acting upon the second plurality of shell elements,wherein said uniform pressure is calculated as follows;

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