Predicting Long Term Riding Comfort in Cars by Contact Forces Between Human and Seat

In this paper a project is described on finding a relationship between discomfort and contact force distribution between human and seat. In the first step experiments were conducted to find correlations between pressure and discomfort. In the second step these findings were validated for long term discomfort. The gained knowledge provides the possibility to check the long term riding properties of a car seat by taking the pressure distribution which takes only a few minutes. Furthermore, pressure distributions which are computed by digital human models can be evaluated with this knowledge.