Buttock and back pressure distribution tests on seats of mobile agricultural machinery

Multidisciplinary effort is usually required in the evaluation of comfort problems in the working environment of mobile agricultural machinery workers. Comfort can be partly assessed from the study of the pressure distribution of the human-seat interface. Four combine foam seats and a new air-based seat were compared with regards to static buttocks and back support pressures. Within and between subject variability and the issue of measurement repeatability were addressed. Significant differences were found in the maximum pressure profiles of the four seating systems with seats 2 and 3 performing better than seat I (seat 4 showed no significant difference when compared to the other seats). There is an almost linear relationship between mean pressure and body mass index. In all cases the air seating system performed better with regards to the static pressure gradients.