Orbital ATK finds “root cause” in Takata air bag ruptures

It’s been just over a year since Takata first made headlines for defective air-bags. Recalls have affected millions of U.S. drivers, with the exploding air bags being blamed for the deaths of 10 people and for injuring more than 100 worldwide.

This prompted domestic car companies to conduct investigations of their own. The Independent Testing Coalition (“ITC”) hired Orbital ATK in the beginning of 2015 and after a roughly year-long investigation, officials say they have identified the root causes.

A combination of heat and moisture are primarily to blame, according to researchers.

In a recent report, the coalition released three separate factors which include:

– The presence of pressed phase stabilized ammonium nitrate propellant without moisture-absorbing desiccant.

– Long term exposure to repeated high temperature cycling in the presence of moisture.

– An inflator assembly that does that not adaquetly prevent moisture intrusion in high humidity.

Project manager David Kelly says Orbital ATK’s analysis was backed by 20,000 hours of testing and analysis. He says the aerospace firm was the best hire the coalition could have made for the investigation.

“The team at orbital…they are literally rocket scientists.” Says Kelly.

The coalition consists of ten automakers that have Takata airbags in their passenger vehicles. Kelly says ITC initially identified 63 potential causes for the defective airbags, which were then tested by Orbital ATK through what he described as a two-prong approach.

“If they couldn’t create a situation where they could either predict the failure or model something or look at data that was already available, then they said that’s not part of the root cause.” He explains.

We’re told Orbital’s strong track record of determining root causes was not the only reason why the firm was hired. Kelly explains it was a plus that they do not work in the automotive industry.

“So they don’t bring any sort of pre-conceived notions or bias to what the problem may be they were able to come in and look at the issue with a completely blank piece of piece and start an issue without any biases.” Explains Kelly.

47 ABC also reached out to Takata on Monday.

Company spokesman Jared Levy says these results are consistent with their own findings. A statement read in part “We fully cooperated with the ITC to support their analysis, and we will continue to work closely with them.”

Kelly says all of the tests were done in Utah.