This paper gives a state of the art impression on research and development activities in the field of motorcycle airbag systems. The combined multibody-finite element approach offered by the MADYMO Crash Victim Simulation program is applied to modelling the motorcycle-airbag-rider interaction. Both a model of a motorcycle sled mock-up and a complete model of an airbag-equipped motorcycle were developed. The first model is the mathematical counterpart of an actual sled test, representing a 90 degrees frontal impact between a motorcycle and a passenger car side structure, involving a pre-inflated airbag. It is expected that the full airbag-equipped motorcycle model can be used for performance evaluation of different motorcycle airbag restraint systems under different impact conditions. This expectation is based on the correlation found between the sled test and simulation results.
Samenvatting