Optimization Design For Automobile Cabin Ergonomic Package

The ergonomic layout inside the automobile cabin is an important part of the car design due to its significant influence on the comfort of the driver.The ergonomic design has to take into account the size of human body and the rigid point inside the cabin,as well as their relative position.In addition,because the comfort level depends on the subjective feeling of the end users,quantitative assessment of the comfort level is necessary to optimize the design.Therefore,this thesis developed a methodology to optimize the layout of the rigid point inside the cabin based on its relative position to the human body as well as the comfort level of the user.Extensive study has been done to quantitatively assess the comfort level of the ergonomic design for the automobile cabin.However,only limited research was performed of the optimization of the rigid point layout.The methodology developed by most international automobile companies to determine the position of the rigid point inside the cabin is that,firstly,an initial position was chosen based on the comfort range of the end users’ joint angle,then an iteration was applied to identify the most suitable point based on the comfort level of users.The Chinese automobile manufacturers directly adopted the optimization result,which potentially imposes an issue that the optimized rigid point layout may not suit the Chinese people due to the different body size.In this thesis,a uniform design approach was employed.Firstly,a relatively small number of rigid points were chosen to fix the human body,and then these initial points were optimized in position using regression analysis based on the comfort level of users.The comfort level is quantitatively assessed by the RAMSIS.analysis The body size was designed specifically for the Chinese people.This optimization method was then validated in the design of the position of H-point,the center of the steering wheel,as well as the shift handle.