Study on Impact Behavior of Automobile Seat

Abstract

Investigation of the behavior of an automobile seat subjected to an impact load is important to improve safety. The following three subjects on the design of the seat frame are described. First, in order to understand the fundamental impact behavior of a seat frame, the characteristics of impact behavior were studied through experiments carried out under various impact conditions. Second, using an explicit finite element method, a structural analysis method for the simulation of impact behavior was investigated. This analysis method was shown to be useful by comparing its results with the experimental results. Finally, the influence of design parameters of the seat frame on impact behavior was investigated. There has been a growing demand that the structure of the seat should be designed rationally by evaluating correctly the influence of design parameters upon such characteristics as strengh and flexibility. The authors proposed a statistical optimization method that consists of two steps : effectivity analysis and mathematical programming. In this paper, the effectivity analysis was applied to the seat frame, and the applicability of the effectivity analysis was confirmed by comparing with the experimental results.