Vibration Synthesis and Seat Dynamics Compensation for Single-Axis Seat Vibrations in Driving Simulators

Realistic seat vibration reproduction is essential for delivering authentic haptic cues and enhancing driver immersion in driving simulators. Unlike direct playback of road recordings, simulator applications require vibration synthesis that responds interactively to driver inputs and vehicle dynamics. Reproducing these vibrations at the seat is often complicated by actuator bandwidth limitations and the dynamic behaviour of the seat structure itself, which can alter the intended target response. This work presents vibration synthesis and seat dynamics compensation strategies implemented on a single-axis seat vibration reproduction system equipped with a vertical actuator. Frequency Response Functions (FRFs) were measured to characterise the system dynamics under single-axis excitation. Run-up and coast-down tests were conducted on the seat and compared to target responses measured on an actual vehicle under operational conditions. Several seat dynamics compensation strategies were evaluated, including inverse FRF filtering, energy-based matching, and manual frequency-domain equalisation. The results indicate that single-input single-output (SISO) compensation approaches can achieve reasonable performance under independent single-axis excitation when compared to alternative methods. The study presents a comparative evaluation of these methodologies and highlights their respective challenges and limitations.