Search Results

Seamless Passenger Airbag Door, which means the seam of the passenger airbag door is not visible to the passenger, is being frequently implemented in the instrument panel because of its good surface appearance. But it is always a challenge to design a robust passenger airbag door with an invisible seam because many kinds of failures are possible during the design, such as cracks of the substrate of instrument panel, hinge failure of airbag door, windshield breakage, etc. Besides the engineering difficulties, the simulation of seamless passenger airbag door deployment is challenging due to three aspects: 1. the simulation method of the early stage airbag deployment (0~20 msec after trigger), 2. the material model of the airbag door pre-weakening line (the invisible seam); and 3. the physical measurement of the reaction load between cushion and door.

Generally, it is difficult to compare the warpage of CAE simulation with which of physical part directly for large, thin-wall injection molded part. The warpage of an injection molded automotive interior door panel was discussed in this paper. The CAE simulation result was obtained via analysis in Autodesk Moldflow software with a reasonable CAE model which was constrained according to the physical measurement, and in the physical measurement, several points' positions were confirmed to make sure that the part was fixed on the gauge correctly and consistently. Finally, the warpage result of CAE simulation showed a good consistency with which was measured with a three-coordinate measuring machine.