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Position of the H-point plays a vital role during designing the seating system. The seating system provides support and comfort to the occupants while they are operating the vehicle. The traditional way to design a seat system is to use rules of thumb and experience, which often results in several costly design iterations. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the capability of CAE analytical tool to find the H-point at the early phase of the seating system design without compromising the comfort level of the occupant. The recently launched Lincoln Continental front seating system was used to validate this purpose. The Continental seating system has unique design features which provide special challenges in designing and simulating the seat. With the help of CAE analytical tool, the traditional process is streamlined and a seat design could be achieved in a shorter period with greater accuracy.

The demand for seating comfort is growing - in cars as well as trucks and other commercial vehicles. This is expected as the seat is the largest surface area of the vehicle that is in contact with the occupant. While it is predominantly luxury cars that have been equipped with climate controlled seats, there is now a clear trend toward this feature becoming available in mid-range and compact cars. The main purpose of climate controlled seats is to create an agreeable microclimate that keeps the driver comfortable. It also reduces the “stickiness” feeling which is reported by perspiring occupants on leather-covered seats. As part of the seat design process, a physical test is performed to record and evaluate the life cycle and the performance at ambient and extreme temperatures for the climate controlled seats as well as their components. The test calls for occupied and unoccupied seats at several ambient temperatures.

Manufacturing processes often produce a large amount of heat, which needs to be pumped out of the factory to maintain thermal stability and comfort. Thermal comfort is essential to maintain a suitable working environment in a factory. It has a strong impact on the health and productivity of workers. In addition, it is mandatory to keep the working environment within specified thermal and relative humidity ranges. Periodic assessments of these thermal parameters is routine in most factories. Inclusion of additional manufacturing equipment or processes can lead to a significant change in the working environment and consequent comfort, this needs to be addressed quickly. Rather than wait to measure these effects it is preferable to develop a reliable simulation method for the proactive study and improvement of thermal comfort levels. A reliable simulation approach is developed in this study for the prediction of thermal comfort in an automotive manufacturing plant.

In many fields of technology, examinations of the past can provide insights into the future. This paper reviews the last 20 years of automotive seat comfort development and research as chronicled by SAE’s session titled “Human Factors in Seating Comfort”. Records suggest that “Human Factors in Seating Comfort” has existed as a separate session at SAE’s World Congress since 1999. In that time there have been 148 unique contributions (131 publications). The history is fascinating because it reflects interests of the time that are driven by technology trends, customer wants and needs, and new theories. The list of contributors, in terms of authors and their affiliations, is also telling. It shows shifts in business models and strategies around collaboration. The paper ends with a discussion of what can be learned from this historical review and the major issues to be addressed. One of the more significant contributions of this paper is the reference list.

Seat assessment is an important necessity for the growing auto industry. The design of seats is driven by customer’s demand of comfort and aesthetics of the vehicle interiors. Some of the few seat assessments are H-point prediction with H-point Machine (HPM); backset prediction with Head Restraint Measuring Device (HRMD); seat hardness and softness. Traditional seat development was through developing series of prototypes to meet requirements which involved higher costs and more time. The seat requirement of H-Point measurement is of focus in this paper. Though there are other commercial available software/methods to perform the H-point measurement simulations, the aim here was to assess the capabilities of an alternate Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) methodology using CAE tools - PRIMER and LS-Dyna. The pre-processing tools - Hypermesh and ANSA have been used for modeling and Hyperview tool used for reviewing the simulations.