An Examination of Airbags and How They Work
Not many individuals know that the design of airbags - a soft cushion to impact against in a crash - has been around for decades. The first patent on an airbag for airplanes was submitted during World War II. During the 1980s, the first commercial airbags were present in vehicles.
Up to now, statistics show that air bags reduce the risk of death in a square head-on crash by as much as 30%. Nowadays there are also seat-mounted and door mounted side airbags. As a matter of fact, some cars go far further than only having dual airbags, and alternatively have six to eight airbags.
An airbag’s goal is to slow down the advanced movement of the driver in just a split second. An airbag can accomplish this goal in 3 steps:
- The bag itself is made of a slim, nylon fabric that’s packed into the dashboard or steering wheel and, nowadays, the door or seat
- The sensor is the device that tells the bag to expand. Inflation happens when there’s a collision force equal to motoring into a wall at around 24 km an hour. A switch is thrown when there’s a mass shift that closes an electrical contact, notifying the detectors that a crash has happened. The detectors obtain information from an accelerometer that’s part of a micro chip
- The airbag’s ballooning facility combines sodium azide (NaN3) with potassium nitrate (KNO3) to develop nitrogen gas. Hot gusts of the nitrogen balloon the airbag
Due to the superfast deployment of an air bag, it’s crucial the passenger and driver sit in the seat with a straight back allowing a safe distance between their face and the steering wheel / dashboard - this allows time for the bag to balloon while the driver/passenger are being pushed forwards by the impact of the smash.
