Patent attributes
The present invention comprises an external airbag system for mounting on a vehicle (24) that deploys into the region above the bumper (38) to prevent or mitigate injuries that would have otherwise been caused by a person striking the grill (28) or hood area (26) of the vehicle. The airbag (20) is stored in a housing (40) mounted within the front bumper (38) of the vehicle. The airbag (20) is deployed upwardly through an opening (42) in the upper surface of the bumper (38) into the region between the upper surface of the bumper (38) and the front surface of the grill (28) and hood (26). The airbag (20) is generally T-shaped and includes a plurality of internal tethers (30,31) extending internally between the opposing inner surfaces (74) at regular intervals to cause the airbag (20) to be tufted. The internal tethers (30, 31) reduce the volume of the airbag (20) for a given frontal area thereby decreasing the inflation time required, without resort to fabricating the airbag (20) from multiple independent chambers. Selected of the internal tethers (31) may be designed to break as the airbag reaches close to its full inflation pressure to allow a portion of the airbag to bulge outwardly after the air bag is fully deployed. The remaining tethers (30) are designed to break as the pressure increases when the airbag is collapsed in a collision.
