An Evaluation of Active Knee Bolsters

In the present paper, the impact between an active knee bolster system and occupant knees has been studied using finite element analysis. The active knee bolster system consisted of an inflatable molding part and a pair of EA supporting brackets. Also included in the FEA model was the entire vehicle cockpit. Both driver-side and passenger- side occupants were considered. The active knee bolster FEA model was first validated by test data including kinematics and femur loads. The performance of active knee bolsters was then compared with that of conventional structural knee bolsters