Abstract: A concept of seat belt webbing with negative Poisson's ratio (NPR) characteristic was proposed
for mitigating the harm to occupants by the seat belt in car-crash accidents. A finite element (FE) model with a
simplified human chest model was established and used for webbing performance simulation. The occupant
protection performances of NPR webbing were compared with that of the traditional webbing. The effects of
Poisson’s ratio and friction coefficient on the NPR webbing’s performance were investigated. The effectiveness
of the NPR webbing was verified by MADYMO dummy crash simulation. The results indicate that compared with
the traditional seat belt webbing, the NPR webbing can effectively reduce the occupant chest deflection; the
smaller the Poisson’s ratio, the better the protection performance; friction between the occupant chest and the
NPR webbing is not conducive to the effectiveness of the NPR webbing.

Key words: automotive safety, passenger protection, seatbelt webbing, negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR), finite element (FE) simulation