NUMERICAL MODELLING AND EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION OF AIRBAG FOR PACKAGING MATERIAL APPLICATION

This paper discusses airbag modelling for an application of packaging material. The present airbag model adopted a numerical approach where the air in the airbag is governed as a control volume following the Gamma law gas equation of state; meanwhile, the airbag itself is modelled with 4-node membrane elements. The time domain of the simulation spans the airbag inflation stage, the stabilization stage, and the impact stage. Therefore, this particular model allows a user to further develop an optimum airbag according to the fragility level of the intended product by varying not only geometry of the airbag but also the gas properties and its pressure. Furthermore, the paper also shows a comparison of the model results to those of experimental data. Although the analysis was limited to a linear elastic model, excellent agreements were obtained for cases where the airbag intact and burst after impact