Heating Aspects of Augmented Heated and Cooled Seats

Heating and cooling of automotive seats is a relatively new technology that delivers conditioned air to the occupant's seat providing an overall improvement in passenger comfort. This paper combines experimental and computational data to describe the effect of seat heating on passenger comfort. Included are: (1) a review of current seat heating technologies, (2) the introduction of an innovative seat heating technology using the vehicle's HVAC system, (3) the inclusion of thermal comfort seat strategy for improving overall comfort, and (4) validation of the thermal comfort seat strategy with experimental data. The paper focuses on the occupant's overall comfort in heating mode under different ambient conditions.