Passenger vibrational comfort: analysis and validation of a human-seat interface multibody model

The thesis work is an investigation on passenger vibrational comfort and seat filtering: to perform this work a multibody model that simulates human-seat interface is analysed. Thesis starts from a multibody analysis in Adams Car environment, by the use of FCA proprietary tool, MB-SHARC, of a full vehicle model. By the analysis of experimental data done in Balocco Proving Ground on a vehicle with two passengers (driver and rear seat passenger) three different missions are analysed to perform a complete correlation of the vehicle: obstacle, a rough road and highway. Through the analysis of the amplitude of the signals, missions are split in two groups based on the amplitude of acceleration: this because the hydraulic components in the vehicle model and some components of the human-seat interface model show a quite different behaviour depending on the amplitude involved. To correlate the human-seat interface model, the most relevant results analysed are the transfer function from the seat rail acceleration to the acceleration on the seat cushion and backrest. A modification of the human-seat interface template is necessary in order to have a better correlation with experimental results. Most of the results obtained in this thesis on passenger vibrational comfort are performed on the driver seat. The work ends with a preliminary analysis on rear seat passenger comfort.