Muscle Force Exploration through Simulation for Passenger Seat Design

Along with recent advancement, many automobile industries have strongly encouraged research on their product design, structure, consumer comfort and ergonomics and so on. In particular, consumer satisfaction or human comfort is playing an important role including seat comfort, driving posture, visibility, interior space, etc., In general, sitting in an automobile seat for prolonged period can cause back pain or worsen an existing back or neck problem. This study performed the simulation to explore muscle force during prolonged period of sitting for passenger seat design. The trapezius muscle forces have been measured from the simulation and compared for the different backrest inclination angle and sitting period.