A Smart Seat Designed for Crash Safety

When the automobile industry has begun, the safety performance is always an important indicator to evaluate the vehicles. As the vehicle industry has developed, many safety devices is invented to protect the passengers of the car, as air bags, sensing systems, head restraints, impact absorbing interior materials, seat belts and so on. In the present work, the smart seat is controlled by a sensor, which is designed to detect the crash and automatically control the seat of the drivers to move back and lay down the backrest of the seat before crash. The actuating system of the seat is composed by electric motors, screw rods driven by the electric motor and connecting devices. With such electromechanical systems, when the crash happens, the driver will keep at a safer gesture and the direct crash to the steer wheel will be avoided. The design concept with computer aided simulation is introduced in the paper. With the performance checked in LS-DYNA with a dummy crash model, the evaluation of the dummy during the back motion of the seat and the crash is conducted.