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Sixty Million Car Bombs: Inside Takata’s Air Bag Crisis (2016)
- camtarn 8y agoJust got my Honda airbag replaced about a month ago. The letter sounded alarming enough - "airbag overinflation leading to pieces of the metal inflator being propelled into the cabin area" - but I hadn't realized quite how big the bits of shrapnel were, and I didn't know why it was happening. "Ammonium nitrate has five phases of varying density that make it hard to keep stable over time. A propellant made with ammonium nitrate would swell and shrink with temperature changes, and eventually the tablet would break down into powder. Water and humidity would speed the process. Powder burns more quickly than a tablet, so an air bag whose propellant had crumbled would be likely to deploy too aggressively. The controlled explosion would be just an explosion."