Search Results

In modern society the automobile is an essential companion in everyday life. Be it commuting to and from work or during our leisure time – every week most of us spend many hours sitting in their car. In this context the seat is the main interface between the human being and the automobile itself. Functioning well, this close relationship can foster the well-being of the passenger and raise his spirit; being flawed, it can cause severe pain in the back after a long journey. Thus, for car manufacturers, the aspects of seat comfort are becoming more and more prominent in distinguishing themselves from their competitors. Despite its importance, the development of comfort parameters in automotive seating still is consigned to the subjective judgements of a small number of seating experts or randomly selected test subjects.

In modern society the automobile is an essential companion in everyday life. Be it commuting to and from work or during our leisure time - every week most of us spend many hours sitting in their car. In this context the seat is the main interface between the human being and the automobile itself. Functioning well, this close relationship can foster the well-being of the passenger and raise his spirit; being flawed it can otherwise cause severe pain in the back after a longer journey. Thus, for car manufacturers, the aspects of seat comfort are becoming more and more prominent in distinguishing themselves from their competitors. Despite its importance the development of comfort parameters in automotive seating is still being consigned to the subjective judgements of a poor number of seating experts or randomly selected test subjects.

For car manufacturers, seating comfort is becoming more and more important in distinguishing themselves from their competitors. There is a simultaneous demand for shorter development times and more comfortable seats. Comfort in automobile seats is a multi-dimensional and complex problem. Many current sophisticated measuring tools were consulted, but it is unclear on which factors one should concentrate attention when measuring comfort. The goal of this paper is to find a model in order to predict the overall seating discomfort based on body area ratings. Besides micro climate, the pressure distribution appears to be the most objective measure comprising with the clearest association with the subjective ratings. Therefore an analysis with three different test series was designed, allowing the variation of pressure on the seat surface. In parallel the subjects were asked to judge the local and the overall sensation.

Cutting development times in car manufacturing means bringing forward the knowledge processes. Simulations based directly on CAD data reduce or replace time-consuming hardware loops significantly and therefore make a significant contribution to this. Ergonomic product design is an area that is challenged as far as the further development of virtual methods is concerned. Simulation of the static and quasi-static positions of passengers inside the car is the current state of the art in ergonomic product design. For this reason, interest is strongly focused on the simulation of complex movement processes within the context of enhancing simulation tools. For the car manufacturer, the manner in which people enter and leave the car is of particular interest. Getting into the car is the customers' first actual contact with it. It may also develop into a serious problem for car drivers, as they get older.

Often, pressure distributions on seats are referred to as an objective method to quantify seat comfort. However, the reliability of seat pressure measurement is yet unknown. Therefore, it is important to know how reliable these pressure measurements are, before using them effectively as a means to predict seat comfort based on pressure measurements. Experiments were conducted to determine the inter-individual and intra-individual variation in pressure distribution. The obtained variation ranges of the mean pressure in defined body areas are presented.

In this paper a project is described on finding a relationship between discomfort and contact force distribution between human and seat. In the first step experiments were conducted to find correlations between pressure and discomfort. In the second step these findings were validated for long term discomfort. The gained knowledge provides the possibility to check the long term riding properties of a car seat by taking the pressure distribution which takes only a few minutes. Furthermore, pressure distributions which are computed by digital human models can be evaluated with this knowledge.