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Passenger fatigue during long distance driving is greatly influenced by the comfort performance of the seat. Seat comfort performance is determined by the appropriate contour of the seat and the appropriate pad with sufficient thickness. The height of vehicle has been lowered to enhance car styling, and battery for electric vehicle applied to the underbody of the vehicle, reducing the package space of the seat in the vehicle. These external factors eventually lead to a reduced pad thickness of the seat cushion and compromise one of the important components in the seat cushion compartment, creating an uncomfortable cushioning problem when driving long distances. To improve the cushion composition of the seat within a limited package, air bladders are applied to the underside of the cushion pad. In addition, the function to support the buttocks using the air bladders of the lower cushion, similar to lumbar support for the back, was implemented to improve cushion comfort performance.

Design optimization of a vehicle is required to increase a product value for noise and vibration performances and for a fuel-efficient car. This paper describes the development process of a high stiffness and lightweight vehicle. A parameter study is carried out at the initial stage of design using the mother car, and a design guide with a good performance is achieved early prior to the development of the proto car. Influences of body stiffness based on the relative weight ratio of the floor and side structures are analyzed. Results show that bending and torsional stiffness has a significant effect on weight distribution ratio. Influences of the distribution of side joint stiffness are analyzed through numerical experiments. Results reveal that the stiffness difference between the upper and lower parts should be small to increase the stiffness of a body.

Based on the success of the second-generation Genesis G80 model, Hyundai Motor has declared the independence of Genesis as a luxury car brand in 2015. The third-generation G80 is the representative model of the Genesis brand and has a unique identity of Genesis that can surpass its competitors. In addition, it was necessary to develop seats that were considered not only for ICE but also for the scalability of electric vehicles. A newly formed Genesis organization established the Genesis design philosophy of its own. Four key elements of the design philosophy were comfort, aesthetics, usability and safety. The third-generation Genesis seats incorporate its design philosophy of seat design and new technologies based on comfort, aesthetics, usability, and safety. This paper describes the seat development of the Ergo Motion seat, Rear Seat Relaxtion(Relax + Position), Seat Syling, AVN switch display and PSS(pre-active safety seat )system, which are representative technologies.

The shift towards electric vehicles is gaining pace to address carbon neutrality and environmental concerns. New technologies are being developed to cater to the unique features of EVs, such as the low indoor noise at low speeds, which require a low-noise ventilation system. A new dual-blower type system was developed to solve the problem of seat-bottom package caused by battery placement in the vehicle. This system uses two blowers, one for the cushion and one for the back, and reduces RPM to lower high-frequency noise. A new solution was introduced for temperature drop performance in the ventilation system. An integrated controller was also developed to control the seat warmer and ventilation system, with a smart control function added to respond to vehicle speed and ventilation time based on customer usage. As a result, this new ventilation system improves air volume, reduces noise, improves foot space, and reduces the number of parts compared to the previous system.

This paper suggests the new mechanism of rear seat reclining that enhances the comfort. This mechanism enables rear seat back to recline backward with cushion moving forward and upward simultaneously, which makes the rear seat more relaxing. Also this mechanism was developed to have many advantages, especially in the aspect of cost, weight and package layout.

The driver’s seat in heavy trucks is designed for an upright driving posture with narrow back and cushion angles; thus, the seatback offers very little support. This makes the sitting posture prone to shifting during long trips, leading to loss of comfort and increase in fatigue. Sitting posture stability allows initial posture to be maintained during long drives, and the lack of stability causes fatigue and body pain during the drive. This study confirmed that enhancement of sitting posture stability of the driver’s seat in heavy trucks requires appropriate support from the cushion. The study also analyzed the support characteristics of each part of the cushion, and presented development guidelines of new cushion. Although subjective assessments of sitting posture stability have been performed, this study presented a method for quantitative and efficient assessment of sitting posture stability using the PAM-COMFORT simulation tool and virtual testing.

The dimensions of an automobile seat are important factors affecting a driver’s seating comfort, fit, and satisfaction. In this regard, seat engineers put forth tremendous efforts to evaluate the dimensions of a product seat until the dimensions are consistent with the design reference in a computer aided design (CAD). However, the existing evaluation process is heavily reliant on seat engineers’ manual tasks which are highly repetitive, labor intensive, and time-demanding tasks. The objective of this study is to develop an automated system that can efficiently and accurately evaluate seat products by comparing estimated seat dimensions from a CAD model or a 3D scan model. By using the developed system, the evaluation time for comparing 18 seat dimensions on CAD and scan models has been substantially reduced to less than one minute, which is 99% time saving compared to two hours in the manual process.

The digital evaluation process of vehicle-seat dimensions is an efficient and cost-effective way to achieve better seating comfort and proper fit. The present study is intended to quantify the statistical relationships between seat dimensions (e.g., insert width and bolster height defined at SAE J2732) and subjective seat fit (e.g., too tight, right fit, or too wide). Subjective fit evaluations for 45 different vehicle seats and the corresponding vehicle seat dimensions at various cross-sectional planes were collected by seat engineers (experts). The best subset logistic regression analyses were applied to quantify the relationships between the collected expert evaluations and seat dimensions at each cross-sectional plane. As a result, significant seat dimensions on the seat fit were identified and their statistical relationships were quantified as regression coefficients.

Monitoring driver thermal stress is an integral step for developing an automated climate control function. In this experimental study, various physiological measures for driver’s thermal stress were tracked while intentionally by altering thermal conditions of the seat with a seat air conditioning system (ACS) in summer and a seat heating system (HS) in winter. It was aimed to determine reliable physiological measures for identifying the changes in thermal status induced by the two seat climate control systems. In the first experiment, twenty experienced drivers drove a comfortable sedan for 60 minutes on a real highway while varying the intensity of the seat ACS every 10 minutes to incur ‘hot’ – ‘cool’ – ‘hot’ – ‘cool’ thermal stress. In the second experiment, a new group of eighteen drivers drove the same highway for 30 minutes while increasing the intensity of seat HS to incur ‘cold’ to ‘warm’ thermal stress.