Completely new concept for inflating airbags

Autoliv has announced it has developed a completely new concept for inflating airbags that is more environmentally friendly and more cost efficient than traditional inflator technologies. In addition, it reduces the inflator’s weight by 20 per cent compared to most inflators for the intended application.
March 22, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
4171 Autoliv has announced it has developed a completely new concept for inflating airbags that is more environmentally friendly and more cost efficient than traditional inflator technologies. In addition, it reduces the inflator’s weight by 20 per cent compared to most inflators for the intended application.

The new inflator went into production earlier this year, in a passenger-side airbag for a European manufacturer of premium-brand vehicles. It uses hydrogen and oxygen with inert gas to inflate the airbag, instead of pyro­technic substances. As a result, there are no waste particles at all from the combustion and no effluent gases, not even carbon dioxide. The only side product is regular vapour which, when cooled off, becomes just a few drops of pure water, making the inflator extremely environmentally friendly.

In addition, the mixing of the hydrogen and the oxygen takes place in the textile cushion of the airbag, instead of in a steel vessel as in traditional airbag inflators, which allows for a thinner and lighter steel container and reduces weight and costs.

Autoliv says the weight reduction depends on the original inflator but is approximately 20% compared to most traditional inflators for airbags on the front passenger side. If only a quarter of company’s own needs for such passenger airbag inflators were converted to the new hydrogen/oxygen technology, Autoliv says it would save 1,000 tons of steel every year. Additionally, the vehicles with the new inflator would reduce their fuel consumption by more than eight million litres over the expected life time of the vehicles.

The new APG hydrogen/oxygen inflator will primarily be used in frontal airbags for the front-passenger side where higher gas quantities are required than for other airbags in a vehicle. The next step for this technology is to develop a dual-stage version of the inflator to be able to adjust the gas flow to the severity of the crash and to other parameters. Autoliv says this will be done using two independent ignitors and varying the time lapse a few milliseconds between the ignitions.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Driver assistance with stereo vision sensing system
    May 14, 2013
    A new stereo vision sensing (SVS) system developed by automotive safety systems supplier Autoliv will, says the company, help vehicle manufacturers meet the new test criteria that EuroNCAP recently announced to promote autonomous emergency braking, intelligent speed assist, lane departure assists and pedestrian protection. The system has a field of view of 50 degrees and can recognise objects within 120 metres. To provide the best view, the stereo vision cameras are mounted high on the front windshield behi
    Read More
  • Why integrated traffic management needs a cohesive approach
    April 10, 2012
    Traffic control is increasingly being viewed as one essential element of a wider ‘system of systems’ – the smart city. Jason Barnes, Jon Masters and David Crawford report on latest ideas and efforts for making cities ‘smarter’ Virtually every element of the fabric and utilitarian operations that make urban areas tick can now be found somewhere in the mix that is the ‘smart city’ agenda. Ideas have expanded and projects pursued in different directions as the rhetoric on making cities ‘smarter’ has grown. App
    Read More
  • Hella and Autoliv sign license and cooperation agreement
    May 18, 2012
    Hella Aglaia Mobile Vision, a subsidiary of Hella KGaA Hueck & Co., and Autoliv have agreed to cooperate and further develop their automotive forward-looking vision systems together. As part of the agreement that bundles the competencies of both companies, Hella Aglaia is selling an exclusive license on monovision based algorithms for traffic sign recognition (TSR), lane detection and light source recognition to Autoliv. By monitoring traffic signs, TSR helps the driver to keep the correct speed and follow
    Read More
  • Bit by bit insurers agree data protocol
    November 7, 2013
    Telematics technology may be a game changer for the automobile insurance industry but it comes with some caveats as Colin Sowman discovers. James Bielak, (P&C) program manager at the US office of ACORD (the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development), has an unenviable job: to devise a standard form of communicating vehicle data between telematics providers and insurance companies. To that end he has gathered together a group composed of insurers, telematics providers and other intere
    Read More

Highlighted Content