The Challenge

In the automotive field, the safety of passengers is key and many research and development efforts have been put to ensure each critical safety component is tested and up to standard. Seatbelts play a big role in car safety as it decreases the momentum of passengers, reducing the force of secondary impacts with interiors and prevents passengers from being ejected from a vehicle in a crash or a sudden stop. This greatly reduces the risk of major injuries when used in conjunction with other safety features such as airbags and shock absorbing mechanism in dashboards and steering wheel columns. In addition to tensile strength and durability of seatbelts, the behavior of seatbelt materials under high strain rate is a topic of interest, as polymers exhibit different mechanical properties under high strain rate impact during crashes without breaking.