A seat belt assembly 20 for a vehicle includes a pretensioner 40, and a cable 50 connected to the pretensioner 40. The seat belt assembly includes a torsion bar 60 having a plurality of teeth. The cable 50 has slots (52 Fig. 3) interlocking with the teeth (70 Fig. 3). During a sensed impact of the vehicle, the pretensioner 40 is activated to retract the cable 50 to pretension the seat belt assembly 20 relative to an occupant of the vehicle (99 Fig. 1). The interlocking of the slots (52 Fig. 3) with the teeth (70 Fig. 3) exerts torsional forces on the torsion bar, which yields to reduce forces on a chest of the occupant (99 Fig. 1). The invention may also feature a seat frame 14 and a ratcheting means for permitting the cable 50 to freely slide in a first direction (D1 Fig. 3) and lock in a second direction (D2 Fig. 3) opposite the first, unless a minimum tensile force is applied to the cable 50.
Pretensioning, force-limiting seat belt assembly
2017-10-11
Patent
Electronic Resource
English
IPC: | B60R Fahrzeuge, Fahrzeugausstattung oder Fahrzeugteile, soweit nicht anderweitig vorgesehen , VEHICLES, VEHICLE FITTINGS, OR VEHICLE PARTS, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR |