Profitability is the key concern for transport companies. Costs
are increased due to the rising fuel prices and technological
investments. As well as new legal restrictions on the emission
rates have forced the sector different fuel efficient technologies.
Reducing weight is one of the most important methods of
improving fuel efficiency and cutting CO2 emissions.
Accordingly lighter, more fuel efficient, environmentally
sustainable and safety vehicles are in the priority list of
European authorities. And also the future of hybrid and electric
vehicles depends on the lightweighting. The seat structure was
chosen as the area for study which presented the best
opportunity for weight reduction by the use of new materials. A
seat provides comfort and safety of an occupant's while
travelling. In the event of crash, the passenger seat is exposed
many different forces. For this reason it should be designed
sufficient strength and stiffness. Therefore an optimized seat
design should be aesthetically pleasing, ergonomic, light and
meet the safety requirements. Seats play an important role in
mass of buses and coaches due to number of seats per vehicle.
In this project, finite element analysis, together with topology
and free-size optimization is used to design a lightweight
passenger seat for new generation commercial vehicles.
The seat CAD models were created with CATIA V5 and then
imported into HyperMesh for finite element model creation and
analysis. Results from the nonlinear analysis provide an
accurate prediction of the material yielding and load path
distribution on the seat structural frame components. In the end,
the verification tests which were determined by ECE are
applied the new seat and results were compared with the FEA
results