The comfort performance of a seat is a complex function of multiple seat design factors such as: cushion geometry and contouring, stiffness and damping properties, sitting posture and individual preferences. In this study, the body-seat interface pressure is explored as an objective measure of the seating comfort. A comfort study of automotive seats was carried out through structured experiments involving human subjects and different automotive seats in a static environment. The study involved consideration of resiliency of the PUF materials of the seat-pan and backrest; sitting posture as realised by varying seat height, knee and backrest angle; three different seats with significantly different contouring of the pan and backrest; and eight different subjects. Through a survey, perceived comfort level was collected from subjects. Consequently, the perceived comfort is converted into quantitative values through successfully implementing a multi-criteria evaluation method and results were correlated to the influential factors with an objective to derive an unbiased expression of seating comfort. Results show that the pressure distributions on a car seat (both seat-pan and backrest) are significantly affected by the subject weight, the seated posture and the cushion characteristics. Although body size and mass have a definite effect on the interactions at the seat-pan of automotive seats in terms of contact force and contact pressures, the changes in the seated posture and the cushion characteristics cause the most significant variations in the measured responses. While body weight and size generated significant differences in the measured responses on the backrest, the characteristics of the backrest, namely, the stiffness and the cushion contouring have the most significant effects on the variations of force and pressure. Findings reported in this paper demonstrate that it is possible to define the comfort as a function of seat height, knee and backrest angle. The pair-wise criteria comparisons survey and the AHP based criteria evaluation method revealed that there is a strong correlation between the perceived comfort level and the measured responses - peak pressure and mean pressure. The study further demonstrates that an unbiased estimation of the perceived comfort of a car seat as a function of various seating configurations is possible.


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    Title :

    Distributed occupant-seat interactions as an objective measure of seating comfort


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2014


    Size :

    21 Seiten, Bilder, Tabellen, Quellen




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English





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