Patent ID: 8720943

Claim:
An active bolster for mounting at an interior trim surface of a passenger compartment in an automotive vehicle, comprising: a plastic-molded, expandable front wall for deploying toward a passenger in the passenger compartment; a plastic-molded back wall joined around a substantially sealed perimeter with the front wall to form an inflatable bladder, wherein the back wall includes at least one active vent and at least one substantially circumferential pleated baffle; and an inflator for providing an inflation gas to the inflatable bladder in response to a crash event of the vehicle; wherein the at least one active vent comprises a window opening in the back wall and an integrally-molded flap juxtaposed to the window opening, wherein the flap has an undeflected position corresponding to a first flow coefficient and a deflected position corresponding to a second, nonzero flow coefficient that is less than the first flow coefficient, and wherein the flap moves from the undeflected position to the deflected position when a pressure in the inflatable bladder resulting from a passenger impact is greater than a predetermined pressure.