Predicting Overall Seating Discomfort Based on Body Area Ratings

For car manufacturers, seating comfort is becoming more and more important in distinguishing themselves from their competitors. There is a simultaneous demand for shorter development times and more comfortable seats. Comfort in automobile seats is a multi-dimensional and complex problem. Many current sophisticated measuring tools were consulted, but it is unclear on which factors one should concentrate attention when measuring comfort.

The goal of this paper is to find a model in order to predict the overall seating discomfort based on body area ratings. Besides micro climate, the pressure distribution appears to be the most objective measure comprising with the clearest association with the subjective ratings. Therefore an analysis with three different test series was designed, allowing the variation of pressure on the seat surface. In parallel the subjects were asked to judge the local and the overall sensation. During the experiment the pressure distribution between test subject and seat was gathered by a pressure mat.

The test series are based on 84 subjects and over 500 measuring results, which include three different settings for seat cushion and backrest.