A system to measure seat-human interaction parameters which might be comfort relevant

In this paper a measurement tool is described and tested to evaluate the characteristics of different elements of a seat. Many studies report a relationship between discomfort and pressure distribution, but it is unknown what exactly is happening in the interaction. The purpose of this study is to present a measuring device, which records the comfort relevant seat parameters pressure and elongation while loading a seat. The results of the study, including the repeatability, reproducibility and detectability show that the measurement method is appropriate for our purpose, although the reproducibility has to be improved by operator experience or by a more intuitive assembling of the measurement setup. An application example illustrates that the interaction of the seat components highly affect the resulting comfort relevant parameters. The question is whether this objectively recorded differences are also experienced by seat occupants, which is interesting to study in future research.