An Investigation on the Air Permeability of Automobile Seat Cover Fabrics

Abstract

The level of interaction between passenger-drivers and vehicles has been increasing continuously from the date of transportation vehicles invention to today. Particularly in automobiles the seats have an important role for the comfort of the driver and the passengers. The components of a seat affect thermal comfort while the design of the seat has a big impact on anthropometric comfort. A considerable effort has been devoted to the seating comfort from the point of anthropometries and ergonomics view. However, according to our literature research there has been no experimental study which measures the relative thermal comfort performances of automobile seat cover fabrics. In this study, air permeability of several automobile seat cover fabrics produced using different techniques are measured and then compared. The automobile seat cover fabrics produced using 7 different production techniques were provided by several important automobile seat fabric manufacturers in Turkey, and were tested in the form in which the fabrics were supposed to be used in vehicles.