How do the airbag sensors work?

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Jeff C

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I'm looking at mounting a laptop in my ST, and I'd like to make sure that the air bags won't deploy on the passenger side should an accident occur. It'd be bad enough to be in an accident, but then to have pieces of my laptop shot at my face, well...that'd be no fun. Do they require someone to be sitting in the seat? (I won't be having the laptop on it's stand with passengers in the car) Thanks.
 
By inertia.



No time to explain it right now, will do so more in a bit...



But you can look up the word to get a better understanding for now.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Here is some details...



There are three parts to an air bag that help to accomplish this feat:



The bag itself is made of a thin, nylon fabric, which is folded into the steering wheel or dashboard or, more recently, the seat or door.



The sensor is the device that tells the bag to inflate. Inflation happens when there is a collision force equal to running into a brick wall at 10 to 15 miles per hour (16 to 24 km per hour). A mechanical switch is flipped when there is a mass shift that closes an electrical contact, telling the sensors that a crash has occurred. The sensors receive information from an accelerometer built into a microchip.



The air bag's inflation system reacts sodium azide (NaN3) with potassium nitrate (KNO3) to produce nitrogen gas. Hot blasts of the nitrogen inflate the air bag.
 
I know how the air bag itself works, I'm asking if there is a sensor in the seat that knows if someone is sitting there, so if no one's sitting there, will the airbag go off in a crash?
 
Drivers side is always active. In most vehicles, the passengers is active once someone is in the seat. On older models it was always active. As we progressed, they determined that you needed to be of a certain weight for the bag to be beneficial and not detrimental, thus, the sensor in the seat is based on weight to prevent hurting children by the deployment of the bag..
 
K, thanks. That's all I needed to know, to make sure the air bag would not deploy on an empty seat and hit my laptop.
 
Yeah, I don't really understand that confusion with Jeff's question. Seemed pretty clear he wanted to know how to either actively or passively enable/disable the passenger seat so that when no one was in it, and he had an accident, it wouldn't crush his mounted laptop.



Kevin to the rescue.
 
Thanks, Tom. I didn't think it was that confusing. I really could care less about the laptop, it's about 5 years old, and it's replaceable, I just didn't want it pushed over into my lap or into my face in 1/25th of a second during a wreck. Seems like it'd be an 8lb 100+mph projectile in the cab...
 
Or for that matter, why lose an airbag for a seat that no one can sit in because the laptop is in the way. Those things aren't cheap to replace. Save money or insurance money in case of an accident.
 
I was on my PDA when I first answered the question. I answered it from the post itself, not the text within the post, hence the confusion.



Sorry about that.
 

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