Analysis and Optimization of Cushion Seat Supporting Members

Abstract

Seat structures play a major role in the car passive safety. Due to their adjustment function mechanisms are generally involved in the seat failure mode. With the current evolution of automotive techniques, one of major automotive industry priorities is to decrease the product mass, design quicker and more efficient vehicles, emphasizing on travelling greater distances in short interval of time. For this comfort with safety of passengers is very important, thus the design of the seating system is very important. At the same time, seat rails have to fulfill high quality criteria, there are very strict requirements regarding strength and crash worthiness as the seat rail is regarded as a safety component it transfers forces from the driver / passenger to the car floor structure in case of a crash and they have to provide individual length adjustments possible. Amongst many parts, the seat tracks (upper and lower tracks) carry most of the load on seat structure considering human load. The aim of this project is to optimize an automotive seat track by reducing track thickness and its cost subjecting to static analysis. The adopted design has thickness of seat track as 1.5mm; scope of the present work involves Finite Element Modeling of Seat track assembly using HYPERMESH R 10. Pre-processing steps such as updating of element type, material properties, application of loads and Boundary condition is performed using HYPERMESH. The element type considered for the analysis is SHELL. Processing is carried using ANSYS. The results in the form of stress and displacement are extracted using HYPER VIEW.