A significant portion of comfort issues are related to the muscular loading situation. The AnyBody Modeling System can be used to get an objective measure on perceived comfort / discomfort. A wealth of properties can be found on individual muscle level based on the applied loads, and the dynamics of the driving scenario. This allows for a variety of comfort functions to be evaluated, thus quantifying comfort using objective measures.
Examples:
- Musculoskeletal analysis of driver fatigue
- Fatigue simulation
- Active seating comfort simulation
- Differences in muscular activity between different populations during seating
- Musculoskeletal models for assessing seat comfort analysis / seat discomfort
- H-point simulation in musculoskeletal models of seating
- Driving posture simulation study: Joint angle variability, load scenarios influence on maximum muscle activity
- Muscle mechanical characteristics of driver’s lumbar vertebras and legs in different sitting postures
- How Ford used AnyBody to quantify key design parameters of the Active Motion™ seat. (Download)
Examples of input and output for a model of seating comfort
Input:
- Posture of the human model
- Seat geometry
- Seat stiffness (optional)
Output:
- Muscle and joint reaction forces
- And much more
Contact us to learn more or to discuss how we could solve your problem
The steps to model this can be the following
- Import CAD vehicle / automotive environment using the AnyBody Exporter for SOLIDWORKS See AnyBody Exporter for SOLIDWORKS® | SOLIDWORKS and Making Models using SOLIDWORKS
- Specify the size of the human model
See e.g., Statistical Scaling Plugin - Connect the human model to the seat and other elements of the vehicle interior using kinematic constraints.
- Define motion of the remaining degrees of freedom (DOF) in the human model
- Define the force interaction between the human seat and interior, ensure e.g., foot contact with the pedals or footrest
- Implement force response on interior components
- Define measures for comfort based on model output e.g., based on muscle activity.
- Run the model
- Evaluate the comfort measure.
Case study
Webcast
Selected papers
- Wolf P, Rausch J, Hennes N, Potthast W (2021), “The effects of joint angle variability and different driving load scenarios on maximum muscle activity – A driving posture simulation study“, Int. J. Ind. Ergon., vol. 84, pp. 103161. [DOI, WWW]
- Gao F, Zong S, Han ZW, Xiao Y, Gao ZH (2020), “Musculoskeletal computational analysis on muscle mechanical characteristics of drivers’ lumbar vertebras and legs in different sitting postures“, Rev. Assoc. Med. Bras., vol. 66, pp. 637-642. [DOI, WWW]
- Noor NS, Ghazalli Z, Rejab MR, Fauzi FA, Mamat R, Kadirgama K, Sani MS, Ahmad Z, Johari NH (2017), “A Comparison of Muscular Activity Among European, Korea and Malaysian During Seating Using Musculoskeletal Computational Analysis Method“, Adv. Sci. Lett., vol. 23, pp. 11471-11474. [DOI, WWW]
- Savonnet L, Duprey S, Wang X (2016), “Coupling rigid multi-body and deformable finite element human models for assessing seat discomfort“, DHM 2016, Montreal, 2016. [PDF, WWW]
- binti Abdul Majid NA (2011), “Musculoskeletal analysis of driving fatigue: The influence of seat condition“, Thesis, Meiji University, Japan. [PDF]
- Rasmussen J, Andersen MS, Al-Munajjed AA, Upmann A (2014), “H-point simulation in musculoskeletal models of seating“, 3rd International Digital Human Modeling Symposium (DHM2014), May 20-22, 2014, Tokyo, Japan. [WWW]
- Abdullah E, Fareez M, Jamaludin MS, Notomi M, Rasmussen J, Others (2013), “Musculoskeletal Analysis of Driving Fatigue: The Influence of Seat Adjustments“, In: Advanced Engineering Forum, pp. 373-378. [PDF, DOI, WWW]
- De Zee M, Rasmussen J, Lem J, Siebertz K (2005), “Computer Simulations of the Active Motion System with Musculo-skeletal Models“, In: SAE Technical Paper Series, pp. 272-278. [DOI, WWW]
- More automotive related papers