Airbag Particle (ABP) Data Components

Airbag Particle (ABP) data components

From release 9.3 D3PLOT processes Airbag Particle elements.

These can be thought of as small spherical particles which are emitted from an inflator to apply pressure to an airbag, giving a more realistic pressure distribution than a control volume. Each inflator contains one or more gas generators, which emit particles as the analysis progresses. This means that - in effect - particles are "born" when they first appear in the analysis, and while they don't "die" as such they may pass through the fabric of the bag (or through a vent hole) and cease to take an active part in the analysis. Therefore the number of particles is initially zero, and their quantity increases as they pop into existence as the analysis progresses.

The way particles act upon the fabric of the bag is effectively to make contact with it and hence apply force, mimicking the true behavior of actual gas particles - albeit on a much larger scale.

Airbag particles are treated as elements within D3PLOT, and such data values that are as contourable are displayed in the 2D3D plotting mode. However as will be clear from the tables below these particles act more like small rigid balls and don't have element data as such, so the main purpose in plotting them is to see how they are inflating the airbag and "contouring" their data is not usually very helpful.

At the time of writing (September 2008) the information available about this feature is limited, and the information below has been largely reverse-engineered from what is present in databases written from example analyses run in Ansys LS-DYNA 971R4. It is likely that this feature will be developed further, and generate more information in the future.