The relationship between comfort and knee angles
conference paper
With rising customer expectations, driver comfort will become more and more important for car manufacturers in distinguishing themselves from others. This creates a design challenge, since it is difficult to predict comfort, especially in early design stages. Today, comfort can only be assessed and tested very late during design and construction efforts (mostly using prototypes). Potentially, anthropometric and biomechanical human modeling systems, provide a solution for early comfort testing. Hence, the application of these systems will decrease costs, lead-time and testing time. However, before one is able to create such a software solution, one must have insight in the relationship between mechanical parameters and comfort. This relationship was investigated through a series of experiments in a driving simulator. Both mechanical parameters and postural comfort were measured. The results revealed that the knee joint angle is related to driver comfort concerning the pedal position and depends on the firmness of the seat upholstery. Copyright © 2004 SAE International
Topics
Car manufacturersCustomer expectationDesign and constructionDesign challengesDriving simulatorEarly design stagesHuman modelingKnee-joint angleLeadtimeMechanical parametersSoftware solutionTesting timeAutomobile simulatorsBiomechanicsJoints (anatomy)DesignTrafficComfortMovementPostureHuman modelling
TNO Identifier
13378
Source title
Proceedings SAE Digital Human Modeling Conference 14-18 June 2004 (DHMC) 2004
Files
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