Finite Element Analysis And Optimization Design Of A Car Rear Seat

Car seat is one of the basic units of the car, which links the human body to theautomobile body and is the important component of directly touching human. So ithas a great impact on the safety of the car. With the continuous development of theAuto industry, it become more and more important to studying on the seat, and thetraditional seat design methods can not meet the needs of the current design.Nowadays, along with the computer continuous advancement of technology, finiteelement simulation analysis has become a convenient, fast and reliable method. Moreand more apply to the production design of the car seat and play a major role.In addition, most people put more attention on the front passenger seat of thepassive safety analysis, optimal design and static test up to now. In contrary, the rearseats are much less. However, series of consumers survey reports suggest that thedegree of understanding and demand of Chinese consumers for the rear seats are greatdifferent from consumers in other countries. Car is generally used for the wholefamily together in China. So, the rear seats are used more frequently than other’s.Based on designers usually focus on the driver’s seat, ignoring the importance of thecar rear seat in the Chinese market. Rear seats should attract our attention.Therefore, this paper aims at the car rear seat of a car seat company developedfor the study. It’s carried out simulation analysis and optimization design based on thefinite element method. In order to finally get a lightweight, economically, safely carrear seat, which meet the requirements of the regulations and standards, as wellreduce the blindness of corporate design, shorten development cycles and reducedevelopment costs. This paper studied rear seat belongs to split seat cushion, whosecushion, backrest and headrest are separated from each other. Seat cushion isconnected to the car floor; backrest and headrest are directly connected with the carbody. Influenced by its structure’s form, need studying the backrest, cushion andheadrest respectively by finite element simulation method. The study mainly includestwo aspects: on the one hand, studying the seat’s static and dynamic characteristics using of finite element software to detect if the strength of the seat can meet thenational standard and enterprise standard requirements or not, and identify the defectcomponent in the seat structure; on the other hand, to improve the safety of the seat,improve the structure of the seat through structure optimal design.This paper is consisted of five chapters, including the following:In chapter one, first introduce the structure and utility of the seat, thenthoroughly described the safety and comfortability as well the application of the finiteelement method in the design of the seat. On this basis, lead to the researchbackground, main content and research significance.In chapter two,introduce the basic theories of the finite element and the finiteelement analysis software package HyperWorks, and thoroughly described the processof creating the seat finite element simulating model in the finite elementpre-processing software HyperMesh.In chapter three, introduce GB15083-2006、GB11550-2009and the enterpriseinternal standard on the requirements of the seat, to further analyse the Static anddynamic characteristics of the rear seats by finite element software. Import seat staticsimulation model which established in HyperMesh into Abaqus software and analyseits static performance, including the backrest static performance, cushion staticperformance and headrest static performance analysis.In chapter four, first introduce the basic theories of structural optimization design.Based on the simulation analysis results of the seat, find out the defect of the rear seatstructure. To optimize the structure of the rear seat by using topology optimizationmethod of the structure optimization software OptiStruct and combining with pastexperience. Finally, simulate the improved seat structure. Analysis results show thatthe improved rear seat structural strength has been increased, the safety of the seat hasbeen improved and achieve the expected purpose.