Using Virtual Seat Prototyping to Understand the Influence of Craftsmanship on Safety, and Seating Comfort

Traditional automotive seat development has relied on a series of physical prototypes that are evaluated and refined in an iterative fashion. Costs are managed by sharing prototypes across multiple attributes. To further manage costs, many OEMs and Tier 1s have, over the past decade, started to investigate various levels of virtual prototyping. The change, which represents a dramatic paradigm shift, has been slow to materialize since virtual prototyping has not significantly reduced the required number of physical prototypes. This is related to the fact virtual seat prototyping efforts have been focused on only selected seat attributes - safety / occupant positioning and mechanical comfort are two examples. This requires that physical prototypes still be built for seat attributes like craftsmanship, durability, and thermal comfort. While focusing on craftsmanship and occupant positioning / safety (two attributes that are not typically bundled), this paper introduces the notion of chaining simulations and how this has the potential to 1/ improve the fidelity of the simulated results and 2/ eliminate physical prototypes entirely.