Affiliations: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pohang
University of Science and Technology, Pohang, 790-784, Korea. E-mail:
[email protected] | Applied Technology Research Department, Hyundai MOBIS,
80-10, Mabook-Ri, Guseong-Eup, Yongin-shi, Gyunggi-Do, 449-910, Korea
Abstract: A curtain-type airbag is a safety device designed to protect
passengers from the side collisions of a car. The curtain-type airbag system
consists of an inflator, a fill-hose, and a curtain-airbag. The fill-hose is a
passageway and distributor of the exploded gases from the inflator to the
airbag through vent-holes. Although the design of vent-holes is important for
proper deployment of the airbag, it is very difficult to measure the
exceedingly high speed flow issuing from the vent-holes by using conventional
measurement methods. In this study, we employed a dynamic PIV technique to
measure the temporal evolution of instantaneous velocity fields of the flow
ejecting from the vent-holes. From the velocity field data measured at a frame
rate of 2000 fps, the temporal variation of the volume flux from vent-holes was
also evaluated for the diagnosis of airbag performance. The flows ejecting from
the vent-holes showed high velocity fluctuations, and the maximum velocity was
about 480 m/s. The instantaneous velocity fields in the initial stage showed a
swaying motion of a high-speed jet. The accumulated volume flux from the
vent-holes was also compared at each vent-hole region.
