A Model to Assess the Comfort of Automotive Seat Cushions

A large number of independent and interacting factors affect seating comfort such as seat shape, stability, lumbar support and seat height. Although many subjective comfort studies have been conducted, few of them considered seating comfort from its subassembly level. This paper analyzed the automotive seat cushion designed with geared four-bar linkage for the seat height adjustment. The operation torque and lift distance of this mechanism was investigated as 2 major comfort factors. Ten cushions with this kind of design in the market were compared and assessed.