The airbag design is not new, and some people may be astounded to know the design has been in existence for over 60 years. The very first patent on an airbag for airplanes was submitted during World War II. During the 80s, the very first commercial airbags appeared in motorcars.

To date, stats reveal that airbags reduce the possibility of death in a straight anterior smash by as much as thirty percent. Nowadays we also have seat mounted and door mounted side airbags. As amazing as this sounds, some automobiles go way further than simply having twin airbags, and alternatively have 6 to 8 air bags.

The job of an air bag is to slow down the passenger’s progressive movement as smoothly as possible in just a split second. There are 3 components to an airbag that help achieve this goal:

• The airbag itself is composed of a thin, nylon, which is compressed into the steering wheel or dashboard and, more recently, the seat or door
• The detector is the device that tells the bag to inflate. Ballooning takes place when there’s a smash force equal to running into a wall at 10 to 15 miles an hour. A mechanical switch is thrown when there is a weight shift that cuts off an electric contact, informing the sensors that a smash has taken place. The detectors get data from an accelerometer that’s part of a microchip
• The airbag’s expansion facility combines sodium azide with potassium nitrate (KNO3) to develop nitrogen gas. Hot gusts of the nitrogen balloon the air bag

Due to the superfast inflation of an air bag, it’s a safety requirement that the passenger and driver sit in the seat with a straight back providing a good space between the steering wheel / dashboard and their face – this leaves time for the airbag to inflate while they are being thrust forward by the impact of the smash.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Cars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.