The Relationship Between Seat Pressure and Comfort 2003-01-2213

With rising customer expectations, driver comfort will become more and more important for car manufacturers in distinguishing themselves from others. This is a challenge, since it is difficult to predict comfort, especially in early design stages. Today, comfort can only be assessed and tested very late in the design a construction process (often using prototypes). Potentially, biomechanic software solutions provide a solution for early comfort testing. Hence, the application of this solution will decrease cost and development time. However, before one is able to create such a software solution, one must have insight into the relationship between mechanical parameters and comfort. This relationship was investigated through a series of experiments in a driving simulator. Both mechanical parameters and comfort were measured. The results showed that seat pressure measurements can be used to quantify driver comfort.