Use of CAE Tool to Evaluate the Body Pressure Distribution Plot on Automotive Seating

Body Pressure Distribution (BPD) plot plays a vital role during designing the seating system. The seating system provides support and comfort to the occupants while they are operating the vehicle. The traditional way to produce Body Pressure Distribution (BPD) plot for a seating system is to use actual human subject with pressure sensor mat. But this is only possible when the seat has been manufactured. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the capability of CAE analytical tool to find the BPD plot at the early phase of the seating system design. Computer-aided engineering (CAE) uses many different computer software to aid engineering analysis tasks by using finite element analysis (FEA) which is a numerical method for solving problems of engineering and mathematical physics. BPD plot created by using SAE standard manikin is not very realistic as that dummy back and butt is not deformable compared to human manikin dummy. Human manikin back and butt is made of deformable finite element tissue which gives more realistic direction of body pressure distribution. With the help of CAE analytical tool, the traditional process is streamlined, and a seat design could be achieved in a shorter period with greater accuracy. However, Body Pressure Distribution is a physical test that measures the physical interaction of a seat and an occupant, via pressure measurements. It is an objective information that is related to the occupant's perception of comfort. This distinction is important because each human's perception/definition of comfort is unique and isn't guaranteed to statistically correlate to what we see in a BPD scan. This project demonstrates that we can create a digital BPD scan, before a seat property is built, in order to anticipate some obvious/known/anticipated comfort issues and eliminate those issues before the first property is created. This is very valuable. However, this digital BPD scan doesn’t guarantee a complete comfort as it has been said already, comfort is an objective information that is related to the occupant's perception of comfort.