Modeling of vehicle seat in lumped network model for ride comfort simulation

Compared to the mesh-based finite element modeling, the lumped-network modeling is more useful for the multi-physical system and the simulation of many design variants. A non-uniform discretization of the seat surface into planar multi-patches is introduced for reproducing beneficial features of FEM by a lumped-network approach. These multi-patches are individually attached to the seat frame by visco-elastic polyurethane (PU) foam elements, which can handle the strain rate effect and the hysteresis. This approach is a mimicking the FEM concept while keeping the computational robustness of the Modelica solution.