Search Results

The impact of comfort is becoming increasingly important. On one hand, manufacturers use comfort to distinguish their products from their competitors. On the other hand, more cars than ever are used professionally. The prolonged sitting in automotive conditions of professional drivers introduced new physical complaints, resulting in high social costs. However, the cause of these complaints is not well understood. The use of virtual testing tools can contribute to both speeding up and reducing the costs of the development process of new more comfortable cars and the research in the causes of the new complaints. Vibration loading has often been identified as a source of discomfort. In literature, several human models developed for prediction of human resonance behaviour in vibrations were described. In most of these human body models, the muscles are represented in a simplified way.

Comfort of car seats is becoming an increasingly important issue in the design of vehicles for professional use as well as for personal use. People using cars professionally, like drivers of taxis, trucks, and busses, often have to drive for prolonged periods sometimes leading to physical complaints, like e.g. low back pain. Apart from experimental investigations, virtual testing is becoming more important to get more insight in the problem of low back pain. This paper presents a finite element (FE) model of the lumbar spine (L1-L5). The model contains a detailed geometric description of the lumbar spine and realistic material properties. On a segmental level and as a whole, the model's response was verified for quasi-static and dynamic conditions based on experimental data published in literature. The quasi-static segmental validation comprised of compression, posterior, anterior and lateral shear, flexion and extension, lateral bending and axial torque.