Development of Tearing Pattern Prediction Model of Laser Scored Region on Invisible Passenger Side Airbag Door 2003-01-1018

The tear seam of invisible passenger side airbag door is made on the back of an instrument panel by laser scoring method and it is not shown outside. One of the requirements for the invisible passenger side airbag door is that the airbag module should deploy with no fragmentation at hot, room and cold temperature conditions. In this paper, a section model was developed by detail inspection of tearing phenomena at the laser-scored region. To validate the model, the finite elements of continuous and dot type laser-scored tear seam were built and analyzed in room and cold temperature conditions. Finally, a three-dimensional equivalent shell model was developed and it was proved that the section model and the equivalent shell model could represent well the tearing phenomena of the airbag door. It is expected that the tearing pattern prediction models developed in this study can be used to design the types of laser scoring and the airbag door with the minimum of real deployment tests.