SBIR-STTR Award

This project strives ultimately to eliminate 90% of the deaths and injuries caused by trucks and buses colliding with cars and pedestrians. Trucks & buses average one collision per year in the US. Over 400,000 of these result in injuries and 4,000 in deaths. Ninety percent of the Liability insurance cost for trucks and buses is for the people they kill or injure in collisions, roughly $12 billion per year. When used, the Liwon bumper bag is designed to eliminate 90% of collision deaths & injuries. The Liwon bumper airbag should pay for itself many times over every time it is used. Trucks inflate the bumper airbag before hitting a smaller vehicle. The driver hits a switch to inflate the airbag or a collision radar system inflates it. In most accidents, the operator has hit the brakes anyway and an extra push could trigger the airbag. The bumper bag is an extra tool when brakes are not enough. The specific objective of this Phase I research and development effort is to design an optimum bumper airbag system. For the first milestone, we will use a sophisticated, computerized, mathematical Finite Element Model of the complete bumper airbag system to accurately simulate 1) collisions with cars and pedestrians, 2) inflation of the airbag and inflator concepts, and 3) crosswinds and headwinds during and after airbag inflation. We will vary key design input variables by plus and minus say 20% to see their effect on performance variables. Input variables will include airbag length, front face slant angle, inflator pressure flow rate profile, and others. Performance variables will include inflation time, bumper-to-bumper contact speed, aerodynamic lift force, cost, etc. For the second milestone, we will use these accurate simulations to make simple equations of the bumper airbag system behavior using the key design and performance variables. We will use these simple equations in an Optimization program to develop the best design for the bumper airbag system. In Phase II, we will use this design to build a working prototype.

Thesaurus Terms:
Injury Prevention, Technology /Technique Development, Transportation /Recreation Safety, Vehicular Accident Computer Simulation, Mathematical Model, Statistics /Biometry

This project strives ultimately to eliminate 90% of the 3,000 deaths and 34,000 injuries each year in the US from heavy truck and bus frontal collisions with cars, SUV's, motorcyclists, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Liwon LLC is developing a bumper airbag system that could achieve this 90% reduction. Phase I of this project used non-linear, dynamic, finite element analysis and computational fluid mechanics to model the airbags in collisions and cross winds. The models were used to explore improvements in the design and optimize it for reducing overall costs. The optimum design produced was large enough to reduce injuries and deaths by 99% each. In Phase'll, Liwon will build the airbag system and test it in the Transportation Research Center Proving Ground Collision Laboratory. The airbag will be mounted on a collision wall, and cars with crash dummies will be towed into it. The airbag will be mounted on an impact trolley and towed into crash dummy pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists. These results will verify the simulations and may lead to new improvements for further injury reduction. Several rounds of testing and improving are scheduled.

Thesaurus Terms:
There Are No Thesaurus Terms On File For This Project.