FEM Simulation of Composite Polyurethane Foam for Car Seat Cushion

Abstract

Reduction of both harmful emissions and energy performance intensity of transportation currently ranks among the most important factors influencing the current trends in the development of components used in the automotive industry, particularly due to the legislative regulations concerning the reduction of greenhouse gases. For car producers is one of the possible ways of how to achieve such a goal is to reduce the weight of individual car components while maintaining or improving their in-use material properties. Therefore, the requirement of weight reduction also applies to car seat cushions. FEM a very powerful tool of mechanical parts design. A composite material model has been designed and verified. There were created structural models enabling us to study and visualize the stress distribution between the fibers and the polyurethane foam structure, the structural models were created by means of model simulations using the finite elements. Several configurations of structural models with horizontal and vertical threads were created. Then were developed FEM simulations corresponding with real geometry of the composite seat cushion and their results were evaluated.