Sviluppo di procedure e strumenti computazionali innovativi per il disegno di sedute orientate al comfort.

This paper illustrates a new methodology to assist the designer willing to take comfort into account as a primary requirement for padded furniture design. The basic steps described in this work are: 1. the comfort theoretical construct and its application in seating field; 2. the physiological parameters individuation, such as posture and contact pressure, that influence comfort; 3. the experimental characterization of armchair materials and frames; 4. the development of parametric CAD/FEM armchair models ; 5. the numerical simulations of the seating act; 6. the comparison between the surface pressure distributions at the end-user/armchair interface, obtained by the simulation, and the experimental ones, obtained using a flexible matrix of pressure sensors; 7. the numerical result analysis to determine the effect on comfort of each armchair component.