Seat belt retractor
AssigneeJoyson Safety Systems Acquisition LLC
InventorsMark Gray, Steve Reed
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A seat belt system for protecting an occupant of a vehicle, the system having seat belt webbing connected to a seat belt retractor that includes (a) a frame; (b) a spool with the seat belt webbing wound around, wherein the spool is rotatably mounted to the frame and configured to rotate in a webbing extraction direction and a webbing retraction direction; (c) an energy absorbing device for absorbing energy when the spool is rotated in the webbing extraction direction after an emergency event has occurred; and (d) a mechanism for selectively cancelling the operation of the energy absorbing device by preventing motion of the spool in the webbing extraction direction.
Claims20
A seat belt system for protecting an occupant of a vehicle, the system comprising:
- a belt webbing connected to a seat belt retractor;
- wherein the retractor includes
- a frame;
- a spool configured to be fixed to one end of a webbing so that the webbing may be wound around the spool, the spool being rotatably mounted at both ends to the frame and configured to rotate in a webbing extraction direction and a webbing retraction direction;
- an energy absorbing device configured to absorb energy when the spool is rotated in the webbing extraction direction after an emergency event has occurred and operation of the energy absorbing device is triggered;
- a mechanism for selectively cancelling the operation of the energy absorbing device by preventing motion of the spool in the webbing extraction direction, wherein the mechanism for cancelling the operation of the energy absorbing device is activated after the energy absorbing device is triggered.
A seat belt system for protecting an occupant of a vehicle, the system comprising:
- a belt webbing connected to a seat belt retractor;
- wherein the retractor includes
- a frame;
- a spool configured to be fixed to one end of a webbing so that the webbing may be wound around the spool, the spool being rotatably mounted at both ends to the frame and configured to rotate in a webbing extraction direction and a webbing retraction direction;
- an energy absorbing device configured to absorb energy when the spool is rotated in the webbing extraction direction after an emergency event has occurred;
- a mechanism for cancelling the operation of the energy absorbing device by preventing motion of the spool in the webbing extraction direction;
- and
- wherein the energy absorbing device comprises a torsion bar mounted onto the spool, and wherein the mechanism prevents the torsion bar from twisting.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.