• 한국자동차공학회논문집
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• 제14권5호
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• pp.155-163
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• 2006

Car seat is one the most important element to make comfortable drivability. It can absorb the impact or vibration during driving state. In addition to those factors, it is needed to have enough strength for passenger safety. From energy efficiency and environmental point of view lighter passenger car seat frame becomes hot issue in the auto industry. In this paper, weight optimization methodology is investigated for commercial car seat frame using CAE. Optimized designs for seat frame are developed using commercially available finite element code(ANSYS) and design of experiment method. At first, car seat frame is modelled using 3-D computer aided design tool(CATIA) and simplified for finite element modelling. Finite element analysis is carried out for the case of FMVSS 202 Head Restraint test to check the strength of the original seat frame. Two base brackets are selected as optimized elements that are the heaviest parts in the seat frame. After finite element analysis for the brackets with similar load condition to the previous test optimization technique is applied for 10% to 50% weight reduction. Design of experiment is utilized to obtain optimization design for the bracket based on the modified 50% weight reduction model in which outer shape of the bracket is conserved. Weight optimization models result in the decrease of the strength in spite of weight reduction. The more design points should be considered to get better optimized model. The more advanced optimization technique may be utilized for more parts of the seat frame to increase whole seat frame characteristics in the future.