KEY ATTRIBUTES FOR VIRTUALLY SIMULATING 2 ^ND ROW SEAT HARD STOP MECHANISM AS PER SEAT STANDARD

Safety and Comfort are the core requirements of the automotive seating systems. Number of the occupants, determines type of the seating system requirement. The second row seat often needs to fold and slide, to allow the passenger to enter inside the car. Folding second row seat will also allow accommodating larger length cargo. The over folding of seat is controlled by hard stop mechanism. The hard stop mechanism generally consists of the seat arm stopper at back seat and hard stop located at base of the seat. These stoppers will limit the further motion of back seat. The folding speed of back seat is governed by various factors e.g. adjacent seat foam/structure friction, location, structural mass of seat etc.

The scope of the paper is to evaluate various folding speeds of the back seat. Its effects are evaluated for the stresses and fatigue life of the hard stop components. The paper also discusses about CAE methodology used to setup the load case which replicates physical test setup. The CAE results are correlated with the test results to arrive at the approximate folding speed and subsequently to use it for various design iterations. Main challenges in this task were to develop CAE methodology replicating test rig seat and assembled seat scenario, using dynamic stresses for fatigue life evaluation and correlating CAE results with Test results.