Determining the width of the optimal space needed to accommodate the drivers of passenger vehicles using the analogy of anthropometric measurement dynamics and mechanical mechanisms

Abstract

This paper discusses a new way of modelling the width of the space that accommodates the drivers of passenger vehicles. The fact that there is a more or less fixed zero point, which is the origin of the coordinates of the man-vehicle system makes it possible to determine the mechanical-mathematical co-dependence in this system more accurately. The space is determined by taking extreme pairs of the dimensions and a series of anthropometric measurements to which the vehicle needs to be adjusted as the measurement limits. These were determined by analysis which includes both the theory of mechanisms and vehicle mechanics. In this way the method of adapting the vehicle to accommodate a range from the 5th-percentile woman to the 95th-percentile man has finally been surpassed. The paper demonstrates a methodology for designing the interior space of a passenger vehicle based on the fact that, in a range of anthropometric measurements of equal total lengths, each measurement has segments of different lengths, because people with the same leg lengths have different upper-and lower-leg lengths. Therefore the interior space of the vehicle is designed to accommodate extreme measurements and to allow for limitations caused by movement and the physical laws derived from seeing the anthropometric measurement mechanism as a mechanical mechanism. The paper offers a design for the space behind the windscreen, the position of the steering wheel, and the position of the foot controls together with the total space which the driver occupies, primarily from the aspect of anthropometric limitations, concluding that the maximum width for accommodation of the driver at the lowest level of a seat along the x axis is 169 mm, and along the y axis is 1013 mm. © 2011 Authors.