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2015 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV)

June 28 - July 1, 2015. COEX, Seoul, Korea

Safety Benefits of Belt Pretensioning in Conjunction with Precrash


Braking in a Frontal Crash
Xiao Luo, Wenjing Du, and Jinhuan Zhang

FCW, precrash brake assist (PBA) and autonomous




AbstractThis paper estimates safety benefits of crash with


precrash braking maneuvers under different pretensioning precrash braking (PB) system are equipped in more and more
control factors. A sled test was conducted at 40 kmph with a models with the development and promotion of active safety.
lap-shoulder-belted Hybrid III 50th percentile male dummy to The three systems all aim to avoid or mitigate frontal
simulate a frontal crash. A multi-body model of the sled test was collisions. FCW system will warn the driver if there is a
developed based on the actual situation and verified by test data frontal collision threat through a variety of methods, and the
including the seat belt loads, head and chest injury responses of driver is likely to take appropriate avoidance maneuvers
the test dummy and motion postures of the dummy. An impact among which braking is most frequently used. After warning
pulse with a 0.2-second-long constant deceleration of 0.8 g ahead information is presented to the driver, precrash system (PCS)
of crash was loaded on the verification model to simulate the still perceives the circumstances of the vehicle to detect the
real deceleration and the crash process with precrash braking
existing threatening objects and newly appeared collision
maneuvers. The protection performance of a 3-point seat belt, a
threats. In this situation, PBA is triggered when the driver
seat belt with pyrotechnic pretensioner and a motorized seat
belt was compared, and the motorized seat belt had the best applies the brake and it amplifies the braking force to obtain an
protection effect. Different pretensioning control factors, such extraordinary velocity reduction. If the collision is inevitable
as pretensioning time and pretensioning force, had remarkable -&!+ )))!-)6*-'!nce maneuvers and the braking
effects on injury responses of the dummy. This method could amplifying action of PBA, PB will brake autonomously before
also be used to develop advanced occupant restraint systems a short interval to the collision to mitigate the crash. Braking is
coupled with precrash systems to integrate vehicle active safety the most effective and significant precrash maneuver in FCW,
and passive safety. PBA and PB in preventing and mitigating collisions, and it
may also lead to dip of the vehicle front and a torso-forward
I. INTRODUCTION seating posture of the occupants in which situation the
As one of the most effective vehicle safety innovations, the traditional restraint system is not in its best protection state of
seat belt is improving all through since its invention in 1954 design [9]. In the accidents with V from 10 to 70 kmph, it
[1]. Many significant components were added to improve the costs more for the drivers who took braking maneuvers than
protection performance such as the load limiter and the those who did not take any braking maneuvers according to
pretensioner. And among them the seat belt pretensioner was statistic results of the US [10]. And the seat belt with a
introduced as a component cooperated with frontal air bags in (0)'+ &!()+&*!'&)+)!)+))* '*&6+ have an
the restraint system [2]. To retract the belt webbing and reduce effective reduction in head, neck, chest and pelvis injury
the slack between the belt webbing and the occupant is the responses under some crash circumstances [11]. While the
principal function of the pretensioner. This benefits the motorized seat belt could restraint the occupant in a
occupants not only in frontal crashes but also in rear impacts well-protected position mildly before crash, and it could
[3-5]. In conventional seat belts with pyrotechnic perform optimally in conjunction with PBA and PB under
pretensioner, the pretensioner is activated by the air bag ECU. different crash circumstances as long as receiving the correct
Pyrotechnic pretensioner can only be triggered after crash control signal of PCS. In this study safety benefits of the
irreversibly, and there are some restrictions such as the time of motorized seat belt pretentioning in conjunction with precrash
pretensioning procedure and the amount of webbing retraction braking is estimated using a verified simulation model.
difficult to control [6]. In the motorized seat belt the
Model development and verification is described in the
pretensioner can be driven by the motor that is easy to control,
next section. In Section III, the verified model is simulated
and it enables pretensioning motion mildly before crash. It can
under different scenarios. Section IV discusses the effects of
also cooperate with other systems such as the forward
control factors of the motorized seat belt pretensioner. Finally,
collision warning (FCW) system and the driver fatigue Section V concludes this paper.
monitoring system as an actuator to warn the driver [7-8].
W +6*%'), the motorized seat belt builds a relation between II. METHODOLOGY
vehicle active safety and passive safety.
A. Sled Test
Sled tests are of great use in testing vehicle components
and the performance of occupant restraint systems. It is a
Xiao Luo and Wenjing Du are with the State Key Laboratory of repeatable approach with low costs and easy configuration. In
Automotive Safety and Energy, Tsinghua University, Beijing, CO 100084 this study a decrease sled is used. The sled is accelerated to the
China (e-mail: {luoxiao10,duwj13}@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn).
Jinhuan Zhang (Corresponding Author) is with the State Key Laboratory predefined velocity by electric motors and will then hit the
of Automotive Safety and Energy, Tsinghua University, Beijing, CO 100084 waveform generator at the end of the test track. Four metal
China (phone: 86-10-62781628; fax: 86-10-62781628; e-mail: bars are fixed in front of the sled with an olive head at the end
zhjh@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn).

978-1-4673-7266-4/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE 871


of each bar, respectively. There are polyurethane (PU) tubes In this model, the vehicle-related parts are made of
inside the waveform generator to absorb the kinetic energy of multi-body components while parts of the seat belt webbing
the sled. Two kinds of PU tubes are specially designed to are made of finite elements. The seat belt model includes load
generate two-stage crash pulses, which can represent the crash limiter, pyrotechnic pretensioner and motorized pretensioner,
pulses of a typical frontal collision in reality. The initial and the move of the pretensioners are able to be locked if one
velocity of the sled before crash is set as 40 kmph, and in most is not in the test. The pretensioner models can simulate real
actual )'&+$)* !&+*7of the striking vehicles are pretensioners well based on previous studies. Relative
from 30 to 50 kmph. movement and rotation are simulated by defining several
joints in the model. In this study, the Hybrid III 50th percentile
In this paper, the custom rigid test sled is configured based male ellipsoid dummy model is used. The dummy position is
on the interiors of a passenger car, which is comprised of a well adjusted to fit the seat. The whole MADYMO model is
vehicle seat, a foot plate, a simulated steering wheel, and the shown in Figure 2.
basic framework. A Hybrid III 50th percentile male dummy is
employed in the sled tests to study the injury responses. All the
injury responses during crash are collected from the sensors
inside the dummy. Three single-axis accelerometers are
installed in the dummy head and chest, respectively. A
six-axis force-moment load cell is mounted inside the neck
assembly. A displacement sensor inside the chest measures the
dummy thorax deflection. Seat belt forces are recorded by
force sensors fixed on both the shoulder belt and the lap belt.
The dummy is placed on the seat in a standard driving
posture and restrained by a traditional seat belt without
pretensioners. Make sure there is no gap between the hip and
the seat back. The dummy hands are put on the steering wheel
naturally. The position of dummy head is carefully adjusted to
guarantee that the x-axis of the accelerometer is in accordance
with the horizontal direction. After the adjustment is finished,
the spatial locations of the sled and dummy are measured and Figure 2. MADYMO model
recorded by a coordinate measuring machine. All the location
coordinates are helpful in setting up the simulation models in The deformation of the seat cushion can affect the dummy
MADYMO. The sled test installations are shown in Figure 1. posture during the crash. In the MADYMO model, the seat
cushion is ignored to simplify the model, yet the deformable
cushion is simulated by defining a force penetration curve
(force vs. penetration) in the contact definition between the hip
and the cushion in MADYMO. The curve is obtained through
a series of material tests to ensure a high fidelity.
C. Injury Response Criteria
Data collected from the sled tests include acceleration,
deflection and force. Injury responses of the dummy are then
calculated based on these results. HIC (Head Impact Criterion)
is widely employed as the head injury criterion. The value of
HIC is determined by both the magnitude and the time
duration of the head resultant acceleration. The calculation
formula is as follows,
 1 t2
( t 2  t1 )  

2.5
H IC  [ adt ]
Figure 1. Sled test installations t 2  t1 t1

where a represents the dummy head resultant acceleration in


B. Model Description 6*&t1 and t2 denote the start and end time in milliseconds.
In this paper, a simulation model is established in In this paper, the maximum time duration of HIC, t2-t1, is
MADYMO. MADYMO is very famous in the analysis of limited to 15 ms (HIC15) and 36 ms (HIC36). As for the dummy
occupant restraint system in the automotive industries due to chest, the injury responses are judged by the chest acceleration
its various dummies and fast simulation processing. And calculated in a 3 ms interval and the chest maximum
MADYMO can provide accurate dummy injury criteria deflection. Besides, another criterion, combined thoracic
calculation to simulate the situations of the designed sled tests. index (CTI), is introduced to estimate the thorax injury, which
The model includes all the necessary items, for example is calculated as follows,
steering wheel, foot plate, seat, and seat belt, to represent the
whole occupant restraint system.  CTI 
Am ax

D m ax  
Aint D int

872
where Amax is the maximum value of 3 ms clip spinal
acceleration, Dmax is the maximum value of the dummy chest
deflection, and Aint and Dint are the respective intercepts.
D. Model Verification
One sled test on the Hybrid III 50th percentile dummy is
performed in this study. The sled acceleration data are filtered
according to the SAE J211 recommended practice. The crash
pulse is shown in Figure 3. The pulse has a maximum
$)+!'&'6*&,)+!'&'(()'/!%+%*
Other test data, such as head accelerations and chest deflection,
are all collected and filtered in compliance with SAE
recommended practice, respectively.
(a) Head Resultant Acceleration

200
Crash Pulse (m/s2)

150

100

50

0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Time (ms)
(b) Chest Resultant Acceleration
Figure 3. Crash pulse curve

The sled should decelerate as described in the crash pulse


in the simulation model. With the same initial velocity, the
injury responses acquired from test results and simulation
results should match.
The injury responses from sled tests and simulation results
are listed and compared in Table 1. The comparison indicates
that the simulated injury responses are slightly lower than
those in test results. The dummy response curves in the
process of collision are illustrated in Figure 4. The pulse
widths of different response curves obtained from both test
results and simulation results are almost the same.

TABLE I. MODEL VERIFICATION: INJURY RESPONSES


(c) Chest Deflection
Injury Response Sled Test Simulation
HIC15 (s) 204.00 193.01
HIC36 (s) 443.66 416.16
2
ahead,3ms (m/s ) 449.89 440.35
achest,3ms (m/s2) 294.99 276.32
Chest Deflection (mm) 44.09 38.87
CTI 0.76 0.68
Nte 0.31 0.29
Ntf 0.43 0.42

(d) Belt Force

Figure 4. Model verification: response curves

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In Figure 4, the peak value of the chest deflection curve in posture in the simulation has a short delay compared with that
tests is a little bit higher than that in simulation results while in !&+ +*+,*!+6* )+'()+$0*!%,$++ ,%%0
other response curves, peak values do not show an obvious hands adhering to the steering wheel by sellotape. Generally
difference. In the head injury response, there is a lag in the speaking, the MADYMO model can reproduce the sled test
simulated response change trend compared to the test results. very well and the dummy injury responses are highly close to
The dummy movement comparison at various moments is the experiment records. The proposed simulation model is
shown in Figure 5. The dummy torso motion posture in the verified and thus suitable for further research and discussion in
simulation model corresponds well to that in the sled test the following paragraphs.
during the whole process. But the dummy arms movement

(a) t = 0 ms (b) t = 60 ms

(c) t = 80 ms (d) t = 100 ms

Figure 5. Model verification: dummy motion postures

III. SIMULATION AND RESULT scenario, the dummy is restrained by a conventional seat belt.
Usually, the pretensioner comes into effect about 20 ms after
A. Simulation Scenario Description
the crash begins. In the last scenario, the dummy is restrained
This study focuses on assessing the potential benefits and by a seat belt which is set manually to pretension the belt
effects on injury responses if occupants are restrained before before the crash. In this way, the function of a motorized seat
crash by seat belts, such as by the motorized seat belt. belt is simulated and realized. In all scenarios, the crash
Different from the conventional pyrotechnic pretensioner in pulses are exactly the same and the dummy injury responses
the seat belt assembly, the motorized seat belt can pretension are observed and analyzed.
the belt with the help of other advanced driver assistant
systems (ADAS) and then eliminate the slack between the
occupant and the belt ahead of crash.
200
In this paper, it is assumed that the sled in the model
moves faster than the sled in tests at a start velocity of 45.8
Crash Pulse (m/s2)

kmph. Then the simulated sled is decelerated to the same 150


velocity as the sled in tests right at the time when the collision
begins. In other words, a new crash pulse, as shown in Figure 100
6, is exerted on the model to simulate the situation where
precrash braking maneuver is taken before a crash occurs. It is
50
also assumed that the deceleration during brake is a constant
value and that the constant deceleration is set to be 0.8 g as
proposed in literature [12]. After a 0.2-second constant 0
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35
deceleration of 0.8 g, the velocity of the sled will be reduced
from the initial velocity of 45.8 kmph to the impact velocity Time (ms)

of 40 kmph which just equals to the sled impact velocity in Figure 6. Crash pulse with braking deceleration
the tests.
In this paper, three scenarios are simulated and discussed
in detail. In the first scenario, the dummy is restrained by a
3-point seat belt without any pretensioning. In the second

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In the scenario where the motorized seat belt is involved, the braking deceleration of the vehicle and the impact
the time when the pretensioner begins to work and the force velocity.
applied by the pretensioner can be two important factors to
affect the dummy injury responses. To have a better insight, 500
several more simulations are performed with different
pretensioning time and forces as listed in Table II.
400

TABLE II. CONTROL FACTORS IN SIMULATIONS


Pretensioning Time 300
Prertensioning force (N)
ahead of Crash (ms)
100 150 200
100 200
100 1000 100

100 2000
50 200 0
HIC36 HIC15 Head Acc. Chest Acc. Deflection CTI (*100)
150 200 100 ms, 150 N 100 ms, 200 N 100 ms, 1000 N
100 ms, 2000 N 50 ms, 200 N 150 ms, 200 N
B. Results and Analysis
Figure 7. Dummy injury responses with the motorized seat belt under
Under the three situations above, the dummy injury different control factors
responses are listed and compared in Table III. Although
under the regulation ECE R16 *+$+* ',$&6+(,$$ IV. DISCUSSION
out more than 50 mm when vehicle acceleration exceeds 0.45 This paper presents a novel method using a verified
g, the dummy head still hit the steering wheel, which causes simulation model to estimate safety benefits of different seat
high head injury values in Scenario 1. And the chest injury belt pretensioners with precrash braking maneuvors and study
value is less than that in Scenario 2, because more percentage the control factors of the motorized seat belt pretensioner
of the dummy kinetic energy is absorbed by the head. In coupled with precrash systems. This method integrates both
Scenario 2, pyrotechnic pretensioner restrains the dummy active safety and passive safety and could be a part to develop
torso from forward moving just after crash, and the dummy an integrated safety system.
'*&6+ !++ *+)!&. $*' !&",)0-$,*) Nevertheless, there are also some limitations in this study.
not very high. But the pretensioning force in Scenario 2 can There are some simplifications in sled test lay-outs. The
reach about 3,000 N, which is harmful to the chest. In steering wheel, the seat back and the foot plate are all
Scenario 3, for the motorized seat belt, 200 N pretensioning regarded as rigid in the tests, which cannot perfectly
force is loaded 100 ms ahead of the crash, and that not only reproduce the vehicle crash accidents situation in the real
restrains the dummy torso but also compresses the chest world. And in this study, some factors of seat belt such as the
mildly. ()+&*!'&!& !*+& !*&6+ +#& !&+' ',&+ ')
precrash braking deceleration situations should also be
TABLE III. SIMULATION RESULTS OF DUMMY INJURY RESPONSES
considered. These are also some research focuses in the near
Seat Belt Pretensioning Pretensioning future.
Injury
without Seat Belt Seat Belt
Response
Pretensioner Postcrash Precrash
HIC15 (s) 536.75 168.28 158.33
V. CONCLUSION
HIC36 (s) 536.75 237.16 260.24 In this paper, a verified MADYMO sled model was
ahead,3ms
proposed to estimate the safety benefits of belt pretensioning
489.01 436.32 417.29 with precrash braking maneuvers. The result indicated that
(m/s2)
achest,3ms the motorized seat belt which could pretension the belt before
279.95 297.25 280.84
(m/s2) crash under proper control factors showed a better occupant
Chest protection effect than the 3-point seat belt without
Deflection 35.27 36.72 35.03
(mm) pretensioner and the seat belt with a convention pyrotechnic
CTI 0.67 0.71 0.67
pretensioner. By optimizing pretensioning time and forces
under various precrash braking maneuvers, an optimum
Among the simulations of the motorized seat belt with occupant protection effect can be achieved.
different control factors, the dummy injury responses are The conclusion of this study can also be introduced to
illustrated in Figure 7. From the simulation results, the other advanced driver assistant systems and active safety
pretensioning force of the motorized seat belt should stay at a
systems, and more safety potential can be released with the
lower level than that of the seat belt with pyrotechnic development of intelligent vehicle. And the methodology
pretensioner, because it could be triggered before crash. used in this study can also support the researches integrating
Pretentioning action time and pretensioning force should be vehicle passive safety technic into intelligent vehicle technic.
optimized in conjunction with precrash systems according to

875
The future study will also take into account the control of an
airbag and the vehicle pitch movement before crash.

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