This paper addresses a systematic way of understanding the transfer characteristics of whole-body vibration due to the external excitation and introduces experimental results of whole-body vibration exposed through the contact area between automotive seat and whole-body and results of the ride quality characteristics of automotive seats fixed on the vibration table that is moving simultaneously in the three-axis in a similar way to the real running condition.
First, to understand the vibration transfer characteristics of whole-body, Amirouche's and Tamaoki's models are considered, whose analysis shows a new result that resonant frequencies related to the head vibration are coincided with those of the body. This point reveals that the improvement of the ride quality of passenger cars can be achieved by isolating only external vibration components transfered to the body.
Second, to examine the vibration exposed from the body-contact area, vibration experiment was carried out for five different automotive seats and four Korean individuals. Interestingly, the quantitative assessment of the ride values of tested seats does not only enable us to judge the footnotes the Korean technology in automotive seats has left so far, but also lead to the systematic way of improving their ride quality, in addition to issues in Korean automotive seats raised in this paper.
Furthermore, to examine the quantitative vibration ride quality of automotive seats, the assessment of the ride quality characteristics for each seat and individual was made not only from the analysis of 'direct(not-weighted)' vibration measurements but also from the evaluation of 'weighted' vibration signals using the frequency weighting function and the axis multiplying factors dependent on the position and axis of vibration exposure to whole-body.
Finally, this paper points out the limitation of this work and proposes the future work aimed to set up more 'practical and generalizes' whole-body and automotive seat vibration models including their experimental verification.
