Chairs and seats – Body or occupant restraint or confinement – Safety belt or harness; e.g. – lap belt or shoulder harness
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-09
2001-11-06
Barfield, Anthony D. (Department: 3626)
Chairs and seats
Body or occupant restraint or confinement
Safety belt or harness; e.g., lap belt or shoulder harness
C297S472000, C280S805000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06312057
ABSTRACT:
The invention relates to an assembly unit comprising a belt. buckle for the insert tongue of a vehicular seat belt, a fastener fitting for the belt buckle and a force limiter between the belt buckle and the fastener fitting.
One such assembly unit is known from the German laid-open publication 37 23 772. In this known assembly unit, the force limiter is formed by a stretchable member which is configured integrally with the fastener fitting serving to secure the belt buckle to the vehicle and which is provided with a retaining lug for the belt buckle at its end facing away from the fastener fitting. The stretchable member consists of several annular stretch links integrally connected to each other, which are stretched once a predetermined tensile load between the belt buckle and the fastener fitting is exceeded. The resulting increase in length between the fastener fitting and the belt buckle limits the maximum force acting in the vehicular seat belt. Arranged in the interior of the annular stretch links are protruding limiting elements which, beyond a predetermined extension, come into contact with each other thus limiting any further increase in length of the stretchable member.
The drawback of this known assembly unit is that the characteristic of increase in length versus effective tensile force cannot be adjusted independently of the maximum tensile load required to be transmitted by the assembly unit.
The invention provides an assembly unit comprising a belt buckle, a fastener fitting and a force limiter in which the characteristic of the increase in length relative to the effective tensile force can be arbitrarily adapted to the respective requirements without influencing the maximum permissible tensile load transmittable between the belt buckle and the fastener fitting. In accordance with the invention, provision is made in an assembly unit of the aforementioned kind that the force limiter contains a traction means fixedly connected to the belt buckle and movable relative to the fastener fitting by a predetermined travel, and a stretchable member coupled to the belt buckle and the fastener fitting which member can be stretched by a predetermined tensile force between the belt buckle and the fastener fitting being exceeded. Unlike prior art designs, the invention thus provides in addition to the stretchable member a separate traction means serving to transmit, at least in the fully stretched condition of the force limiter, a substantial part of the tensile forces acting between the belt buckle and the fastener fitting. Accordingly, the stretchable member can thus be dimensioned irrespective of the required maximum load capacity of the assembly unit.
Preferably, it is provided for that the traction means consist of at least one wire cable fixedly connected to the belt buckle and shiftably guided at the fastener fitting, and that attached to the end of the wire cable facing away from the belt buckle is a stopper which following a shift in position of the wire cable relative to the fastener fitting by a predetermined travel, comes into contact with the fastener fitting. Since a wire cable is particularly well suitable for transmitting tensile loads and, in addition to this, can be put to use cost-effectively, an assembly unit can be achieved by this configuration at comparatively little expense with which, irrespective of the existing stretchable member, particularly high loads can be transmitted between the belt buckle and the fastener fitting.
In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention it is provided for that two wire cables are used which are anchored to the frame of the belt buckle and that the end of the stretchable member facing the belt buckle is fixedly crimped to the wire cables. By making use of two wire cables the belt buckle can be positioned reliably in the desired orientation in the vehicle interior without necessitating additional expedients. Manufacturing the assembly unit in this configuration involves minimum expense since the wire cables merely need to be inserted in the guide of the fastener fitting and then simply requiring the end of the stretchable member facing the belt buckle to be fixedly crimped to the wire cables.
Advantageous aspects of the invention read from the sub-claims.
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Barfield Anthony D.
Tarolli, Sundheim, Covell Tummino & Szabo L.L.P.
TRW Occupant Restraint Systems GmbH & Co. KG
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