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Automobile Airbag Systems

by
Danial Sadiq
CSU ID: 831636359
Car Safety Systems
Rolamite
• The mass moved and made contact with an
electrode, sending an electrical signal to the air
bag control module.

• When the sensor was subjected to a force beyond


a designed threshold, the spring or magnet could
no longer keep the metallic mass in place.

• Systems with mechanical sensors were generally


inaccurate at interpreting minor collisions.

• the acceleration that the sensor experiences is


sometimes slightly delayed.

• As an improvement, modern air bag deployment


now relies on microelectromechanical system
(MEMS) components.
Inflation Sequence
• ADXL 50 (Basic MEMS
Accelerometer )
• Single Axis
• One of the first Capacitative
MEMS Accelerometers
• Did not have selectable g ranges
• Used feedback control to keep
the mass in place
Airbag Accelerometer
Working of a MEMS Accelerometer

• The damping typically comes from squeezed


film air damping.
• It is typically adjusted to achieve
approximately critical damping so as to
achieve a fast response without risk of airbag
explosion at the wrong instance.
Capacitance Detection
• Vout is a square wave with amp proportional
to acceleration
• Voltage buffer used to avoid signal attenuation
• noise characteristics of these devices are also
very important
• voltage noise changes with inverse square root
of the bandwidth.
• Faster we have to read accelerometer changes,
worse accuracy we get. The noise
characteristics will influence the performance
of the accelerometers especially when
operating at lower g conditions, since there is
smaller output signal.
• Noise Sources: From the mechanical vibration
of the springs, from the signal conditioning
circuitry and from the measurement system
itself
• Normally as this is a feedback system, The
Common Mode Rejection Ratio (CMRR) is a
measure of the ability of the circuit to keep the
output constant with common-mode
perturbation at the inputs.
ADXL 251 by Analog Devices
• Dual Axis Accelerometer
• Uses PSI5, a new, error free interface for
communication, Open standard.
1. Two-wire current interface
2. Manchester coded digital data transmission
3. High data transmission speed of 125kbps or 189kbps
4. High EMC robustness
5. Wide range of sensor supply current
6. Variable data word length (8, 10, 16, 20, 24 bit)
7. Asynchronous or synchronous operation and different
bus modes
8. Bidirectional communication
• Selectable range of g sensitivity,
±60 g, ±120 g, ±240 g, ±480 g
• High resistance to electromagnetic interference (EMI)
and radio frequency interference (RFI)
• APPLICATIONS
Front impact crash sensing
Side impact crash sensing
Bosch Automotive SMA6xx Family
ST Electronics AIS32x family (Automotive Sol)
Design of a 3 Axis Accelerometer
• Capacitive position sensing is
done by interdigitated comb
electrodes.
• Capacitance variation in X and Y
directions is due to area
changing between fixed and
movable electrodes
• Change in Capacitance in Z axis
is due to distance changing
between the whole of the
plates.
Airbag Deployment Criteria
• control system that can recognize a crash correctly
• continuously reporting a vehicle’s acceleration to an air bag control
module.
• complex algorithms to make air bag deployment decisions
References
• http://www.instrumentationtoday.com/mems-accelerometer/2011/08/
• http://www.explainthatstuff.com/airbags.html
• http://www.analog.com/en/products/sensors-mems/accelerometers/ADXL251.html#product-overview
• http://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data-sheets/adxl251.pdf
• http://www.analog.com/en/applications/markets/automotive-pavilion-home/mems-safety-and-security/crash-sensors.html
• https://psi5.org/fileadmin/user_upload/01_psi5.org/04_Specification/Specifications_PDFs/v2.3/PSI5_spec_v2.3_Airbag.pdf
• http://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/obsolete-data-sheets/2044696ADXL50.pdf
• http://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data-sheets/adxl251.pdf
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0957415817301551
• http://www.st.com/en/mems-and-sensors/accelerometers.html?querycriteria=productId=SC444
• http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/about/media-center/press-item.html/n3720.html
• http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/product-selector2.html
• https://psi5.org/fileadmin/user_upload/01_psi5.org/04_Specification/Specifications_PDFs/psi5_specification_v13_080729.pdf
• http://ic-garden.cn/?p=1171

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