Usually, when a driver assumes a typical driving posture, his or her arms are extended out in front of him or her while holding onto the steering wheel.
Mounting a seat higher in a vehicle, in comparison to a conventional driving posture, will benefit vehicle design by reducing vehicles' mass and as a result, possibly reducing emissions over the lifecycle of the vehicle.
It is concluded that the positions and contact conditions of the hands and the feet affect the biodynamic response of the body in a car driving posture.
A concept seat was developed from a seat fitting trial study [1] and a second rig was designed and constructed to replicate a benchmark production seat in a conventional LCV driving posture.
This paper reports on a study with the objective of comparing reported long-term discomfort between a concept elevated posture seat and a production conventional driving posture seat.
It was found that arm angle in driving posture has a substantial influence on the dynamic behavior of the human body while driving.
The peak magnitude tends to decrease considerably for the driving posture with hands-on-steering wheel, while a second peak in the 8 12 Hz range becomes more apparent for this posture.
For the statistical analyses, driving period, stature group, and lumbar support prominence were selected as independent variables, whereas subjective ratings of driver discomfort, driving posture, and body pressure values were selected as dependent variables.
Body height and driving posture are adjusted in POSER software, then the solid model of human skin, skeleton and muscle are created in ANSA software, and the integrated model of body-seat system is created in ABAQUS software.
The proposed method, based on the combined use of an optoelectronic system for motion capture and suitable matrices of pressure sensors, has allowed the measurement of a large set of car driver posture parameters and the identification of specific sitting strategies characterising the driving posture, despite the different behaviours of the analysed subjects.
