Interior layout design of passenger vehicles with RAMSIS

The interior of passenger vehicles and the adapting of interior components to the human body are designed with historical guidelines, based on the experiences of the manufacturer. In contrast to this, the aim of the following study is to create a consistent and theoretically justified procedure to design the interior layout. Using the advantages of virtual design, this will be done with the software tool RAMSIS from scratch. First, four theoretical seating concepts are generated, each fixing one point of the human body (eye point, H-point, hand point, or heel point) at fixed coordinates for all anthropometric types. Then, the most practical concept is applied together with the geometry of a given vehicle. To generate a realistic and ergonomic seating concept, studies are made concerning the posture of legs and feet in relation to the pedals of the vehicle. The result is a final seating concept with fields of adjustment for seat and steering wheel. copyright 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 15: 197--212, 2005.