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Seat Heater testing methods traditionally rely on a human subject to provide normal contact, load, and thermal conditions. This creates a thermal environment closer to what an actual customer might experience but it also introduces a variation from individual subject’s seating posture, body size, and metabolic differences. This paper describes the development and initial testing results of a passive, heated seat testing manikin (or HANIKIN) that is intended to replace human subjects for more meaningful, repeatable objective testing.

The H-point is a critical part of vehicle design as it is the basis for many engineering dimensions within the vehicle interior. A complete design process includes comparisons of the design to competitive benchmark vehicles. However, the competitive design considerations needed to determine the common standard H-point reference are often unknown. The SAE Human Accommodation and Design Devices (HADD) technical committee recently published a new standard benchmark SgRP procedure [2]. This new standard practice needed to be tested with respect to the accuracy and repeatability for determining the unknown h-point design parameters within industry benchmarking tolerances. In 2019, the SAE HADD committee conducted a study to evaluate the reproducibility of the new procedure. This paper presents detailed results of that study and discusses opportunities for applying the new benchmark practice.

This paper presents a method of controlling the seat heater using intentional oscillations between multiple, independently controlled temperatures (each with its own tolerance range). The amplitude and frequency of these oscillations can be changed based on secondary trigger events such as changes in the interior temperature. The benefits of using this technique to heat the seat surface are improved thermal sensation and reduced energy usage over the typical drive time.