Predictive Validity of the Vehicle Seat Comfort Score by Using the Seat Design and Testing Factors

Abstract: Vehicle seat comfort engineering is one of the most important things among vari-ous seat engineering fields. Many seat engineers want to make it easier to predict and improve comfort. There were several attempts, but it was not easy to predict due to the highly subjective nature of comfort. In this study, we tried to confirm the feasibility of developing a tool that can easily predict comfort by utilizing the main design factors of seats and vehicle packages. As Consumer’s various expe-riences while using cars were defined as comfort factors and models to predict them were developed. A total of 5 cars of mid-sized sedans with various charac-teristics were selected as the subject of this study. As objective measures, dimen-sions of the seats with SAE J826 OSCAR, calculated data from force-deflection curves of the seat, and occupants package layout dimensions were selected. SLD measurement, SgRP calculation, and 3D scans were conducted for all study ve-hicle models. In order to obtain consumer evaluation results, a comfort clinic was conducted for 33 Americans (28 males and 5 females). A model for predicting overall comfort was developed by analyzing both quantitatively and qualitatively measured and evaluated data. The adjusted R2 value of the developed prediction model was 0.8047, showing very high explanatory power.

Keywords: Vehicle, Vehicle seats, vehicle comfort, prediction, comfort clinic, objective measures, subjective measures

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1003794

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