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US 9,067,555 B1Granted
Side impact vehicle restraint deployment
AssigneeFord Global Technologies, LLC
InventorsZhibing Deng, Senthilkumar Mahadevan, Joseph Edward Abramczyk, David James Bauch, Mahmoud Yousef Ghannam
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A vehicle system includes at least one sensor configured to detect an impact and a restraint device configured to deploy in response to the impact. A processing device is configured to deploy the restraint device in accordance with a first timing if the impact includes a front impact and a second timing if the impact includes a side impact. The second timing includes the first timing delayed by a predetermined value.
Claims20
A vehicle system comprising:
- at least one sensor configured to detect an impact;
- a plurality of restraint devices configured to deploy in response to the impact, the at least one restraint device including a side airbag and a pretensioner;
- and
- a processing device configured to deploy the plurality of restraint devices in accordance with a first timing scheme if the impact includes a front impact and a second timing scheme if the impact includes a side impact,
- wherein the first timing scheme includes deploying the side airbag and the pretensioner at a time-to-fire and wherein under the second timing scheme both the side airbag and the pretensioner are delayed by at least one predetermined value relative to the time-to-fire, wherein the predetermined value is based at least in part on an amount of time associated with increasing lateral stiffness of an occupant's ribs.
2 more elements
A vehicle system comprising:
- at least one sensor configured to detect a side impact;
- a first restraint device configured to deploy in response to the side impact in accordance with a first timing;
- a second restraint device configured to deploy in response to the side impact in accordance with a second timing, wherein the second timing includes the first timing delayed by a predetermined value based at least in part on an amount of time associated with increasing lateral stiffness of an occupant's ribs.
A method comprising:
- detecting an impact;
- determining whether the impact includes a side impact;
- deploying a plurality of restraint devices, including a side airbag and a pretensioner, according to a first timing scheme if the impact does not include the side impact and according to a second timing scheme if the impact includes the side impact, wherein in accordance with the second timing scheme, deployment of the side airbag and the pretensioner is delayed by at least one predetermined value based at least in part on an amount of time associated with increasing lateral stiffness of an occupant's ribs.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.