An objective measure of seat comfort

Uncomfortable aircrew seating is more than just a nuisance, it has the potential to produce a cumulative trauma which can significantly affect attention, information processing, and task performance to the extent of interfering with mission completion or contributing to mishaps. Yet, for decades uncomfortable seating has endured as an aircrew complaint with little progress made toward resolving it. Aircraft design techniques have steadily progressed, but the method for ascertaining seating pressure issues has remained, unfortunately, the same: simply ask aircrew where it hurts and hope some cushion changes work. Currently, there exist sensor technologies which potentially can economically and effectively address this problem by reducing the comfort analysis to the examination of an objective, quantitative pressure map. This technical note discusses the brief history of seat pressure measurement research, enumerates some of the technologies that are available that can be applied to the problem, and finally, describes a seated pressure measurement demonstration which shows the power of the approach for maximizing comfort.