Abstract
The market introduction of airbag systems for the protection of car occupants in side impact accident has started recently. During the develoment of these systems, numerical simulation methods are used extensively to reach cost and time goals and to understand the mechanism by which side impacte airbags work. The latter is a particularly important step since side impact and frontal impact are very different in terms of occupant loading and timing of events. This study demonstrates how simulation methods are used in each phase of the side impact airbag development process. The simulation examples include airbag shape optimization, airbag adaption in occupant simulations and optimization of folding schemes. (A)