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A passenger airbag is an important part of a vehicle restraint system which provides supplemental protection to an occupant in a crash event. New Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards No. 208 requires considering multiple crash scenarios at different speeds with various sizes of occupants both belted and unbelted. The increased complexity of the new requirements makes the selection of an optimal airbag shape a new challenge. The aim of this research is to present an automated optimization framework to facilitate the airbag shape design process by integrating advanced tools and technologies, including system integration, numerical optimization, robust assessment, and occupant simulation. A real-world frontal impact application is used to demonstrate the methodology.

With the increasing demands of developing vehicles for global markets, different regulations and public domain tests need to be considered simultaneously for side impact. Various side impact countermeasures, such as side airbags, door trim, energy absorbing foams etc., are employed to meet multiple side impact performance requirements. However, it is quite a challenging task to design a balanced side impact restraint system that can meet all side impact requirements for multiple crash modes. This paper presents an integrated multi-objective optimal design and robustness assessment framework for vehicle side impact restraint system design.