LINKING OF CONTINUUM AND MICROSTRUCTURE MODELS OF FOAM TO AID IN THE DESIGN OF AUTOMOTIVE SEATING. IN: HUMAN FACTORS IN DRIVING AND TELEMATICS, AND SEATING COMFORT

The cushioning of many car seats is provided by polyurethane foam which exhibits highly nonlinear behavior under normal operating conditions. This study attempts to link continuum and microstructural approaches to modeling foamed materials. In a seat-occupant model, the model needs to be of global or macroscopic behavior. An Ogden model of compressible rubber-like solids can be fitted to finite element representation of two-dimensional Voronoi honeycomb structures. This model provides a good description of the uniaxial compression, up to at least 10% compression. Extending this study to three-dimensional representations of seating foam is an important point for future work.