Human body modelling for SEATing comfort – HBM4SEAT

When travelling by train, car or airplane, the seat, which is in direct physical contact with the human body, plays an important role in the comfort experience of passengers. However, designing a single seat capable of accommodating a traveling population is challenging, as the body size and activities of travelers vary greatly. Today, seat manufacturers rely mainly on physical tests with volunteers to evaluate a seat and can only test a very limited number of prototypes late in the design phase, limiting the choice of technical alternatives. To shorten time to market, virtual testing with human body models (HBM) representing a travelling population is highly desired by seat manufacturers early in the design process. However, existing simulation tools are still far from meeting the expectations of seat manufacturers.
There are only a few human body models (HBMs) to evaluate seating comfort. They typically represent a few body sizes and do not describe the variability of travelers. Furthermore, these HBMs are only partially validated and focus on pressure-related parameters under simplified or specific seating conditions. Body responses such as soft tissue deformation, which are crucial for the assessment of discomfort, can be estimated by simulations. However, there is a lack of objective criteria linking these to comfort and, more generally, of biomechanical responses suitable to validate the HBM.
The HBM4SEAT Industrial Chair project therefore aims to structure research efforts around a framework for evaluating the (dis)comfort of a seat during the design phase, from the development of the HBMs to the biomechanical evaluation criteria adapted to industrial applications. A family of diverse HBMs will be validated under different seating conditions, taking into account both contact pressure and soft tissue deformation. Preferred seating configurations will be investigated in experiments with a reconfigurable seat. Measured (e.g. contact forces, pressure distribution) and predicted (e.g. soft tissue deformation, intra-disc pressure, joint angle) biomechanical responses will be used to develop objective criteria. The open-source approach will ensure the long-term availability of the results and their wide dissemination. During the project, industrial partners will apply the framework to both generic and commercial seats, ensuring knowledge and technology transfer.
The Chair is built on the common needs of two seat manufacturers (Safran Seat France and Forvia) and one train integrator (Alstom), global leaders in the respective fields of aviation, automotive, and railway. The host research laboratory (LBMC, Laboratory of Impact Mechanics and Biomechanics) is a joint research unit of Université Gustave Eiffel (Univ Eiffel) and Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL). Altair, a leading engineering simulation company, will assist in the transfer of the open source HBMs in its open source and commercial finite element solvers. LBMC has a long experience in human body modeling for comfort and safety applications in transport. LBMC recently developed the first open source HBM for seating comfort simulation, called PIPER comfort adult. LBMC also developed a unique reconfigurable experimental seat to investigate preferred seating configurations.
The prospective holder, Xuguang WANG, is a research director at Univ Eiffel. Since 1992, he has been working on the digital human modelling for ergonomic design of products. He was leader of the LBMC’s group “Ergonomics and Biomechanics” from 2007 to 2017. He is currently co-responsible for the research axis 'comfort and safety of automated vehicles' at LBMC.