Comfortable passenger seats: Recommendations for design and research

This thesis provides new knowledge on how to design comfortable passenger seats and provides recommendations for design and research. Although the first studies on passenger seat comfort appeared already 40 years ago, the activities and context have changed since then. In this thesis, relationships have been mapped out between activities ...

Improving car passengers' comfort and experience by supporting the use of handheld devices

Background: There is a demand for interiors to support other activities in a car than controlling the vehicle. Currently, this is the case for the car passengers and-in the future-autonomous driving cars will also facilitate drivers to perform other activities. One of these activities is working with handheld devices. Objective: Previous...

Technical note: Spine loading in automotive seating

For car manufacturers, seat comfort is becoming more important in distinguishing themselves from their competitors. Therefore, many studies on participative seat comfort are carried out. In this paper, an objective assessment approach is reported which evaluates the concept of "optimal load distribution", based on the identification of a close...

Direction coding using a tactile chair

This laboratory study examined the possibility of using a car seat instrumented with tactile display elements (tactors) to communicate directional information to a driver. A car seat fitted with an 8 by 8 matrix of tactors embedded in the seat pan was used to code eight different directions.Localization performance (speed and accuracy) was...

A tactile seat for direction coding in car driving: Field evaluation

This in-traffic, field study examined the merit of using a car seat instrumented with tactile stimulation elements (tactors) to communicate directional information to a driver. A car seat fitted with an 8 x 8 matrix of tactors embedded in the seat pan was used to code eight different directions (the four cardinal and four oblique directions)....

Numerical prediction of seating position in car seats

Two of the main design objectives for car interiors are comfort and safety. These aspects are both determined by the seating position of the occupant. Seat manufacturers use the SAE Three-Dimensional H-Point Machine™ to measure seating positions to design, audit, and benchmark seats. The seating positions measured with the H-Point Machine form...

Development of a FEM pelvis model for analysis of pressure distributions

Higher demands by people on the performance of vehicles and the comfort-related physical complaints by professional drivers have led to an increasing demand for more comfortable cars. Car manufacturers use comfort as an item to distinguish themselves from their competitors. However, the development and introduction of a new, more-comfortable car...

Performance comparison of rear impact dummies Hybrid III (TRID), BioRID and RID2

The objective of this study is to compare the performance of different seats using the named three dummies in low speed rear-end impact sled tests.