Abstract
KEYWORDS - Discomfort, Ingress/Egress, Side Sill, SUV, Ergonomics
The purpose of the study is to investigate the discomfort of the lower extremities during ingress/egress of sports utility vehicles (SUV). Ingress/egress is one of the most important issues for ergonomic evaluation of vehicles. Nowadays the width of the side sill of SUV tends to increase in order to strengthen `tough´ feeling of SUV, which could make the customers hard to ingress and/or egress and increase the discomfort of the lower extremities of the customers during ingress/egress. It means that, in order to determine the optimal side sill design of SUV, we have to consider not only the `tough´ feeling of SUV but also the ease to ingress/egress. So we investigated the subjective discomfort of the lower extremities for several design alternatives of the side sill, especially for SUV.
A three-factor within subject design was adopted for the experiment. As independent variables, the step over width, the step height and the H-pt height were selected. The independent variables mean the distance from the seated hip point (H-pt) to the most outward point of the side sill, the distance from the ground to the highest point of the side sill, and the distance from the ground to the seated hip point (H-pt), respectively. For the statistical analyses, the subjective discomfort during ingress and/or egress was selected as a dependent variable.
The results showed that 1) the step over width and the step height had significant effects on the discomfort during ingress/egress of SUV 2) an equation which can predict the discomfort level of the lower extremities during ingress/egress was developed.