LIVONIA – TRW Automotive Holdings announced that its self-adaptive seat belt load limiting technology, capable of automatically adapting to different body sizes of passengers, has been shortlisted as an Automotive News PACE Award finalist. The winners will be announced on April 11, 2011.
The Automotive News PACE Awards honor superior innovation, technological advancement and business performance among automotive suppliers. This award, now in its 17th year, is recognized around the world as the industry benchmark for innovation.
Norbert Kagerer, TRW vice president engineering for Occupant Safety Systems, said: ?We?re proud to be named as a finalist for the 2011 PACE Awards. TRW is committed to innovation and, in particular, to developing technology that provides more affordable safety solutions to help improve occupant protection. The SALL is a cost effective solution as it operates without the need for data input sensors and it highlights that great innovation can also be simple.?
TRW?s Self-Adaptive Load Limiting seat belt has been designed to meet the needs of rear seat occupants and is now in production on the Mercedes E Class.
?Conventional load limiters for seat belt systems are intended to provide protection for the full range of passenger weights ? a standardized approach which by its very nature requires that the system is adapted to fit larger passengers, represented by the 95th percentile male Hybrid III dummym,? said Harald Lutz, TRW?s engineering director of seat belt systems.
TRW?s self-adaptive seat belt load limiters can adjust the force level according to the amount of webbing that an occupant pulls out when they are buckled up. This enables the system to identify the size of the occupant and classify it into two categories, so that in a crash situation, a lower load level is triggered for a smaller passenger and a higher load level for a larger passenger.
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