Ergonomic and sustainable seat design for a Formula Student car : Design and manufacturing of a seat for Luleå Formula Student

Sammanfattning

Formula Student, or FormulaSAE, is a national engineering competition across various countries where university students design, manufacture and drive their own formula style race cars. During the competition, the cars are both evaluated for their design and driven in dynamic events where the performance and reliability is put to real tests. Good driver ergonomics, including comfort, is essential for improving the driver´s performance during the competition, resulting in shorter lap times and thus better scoring. In the project of this master’s thesis, the goal has been to design a seat for Luleå Formula Student, a team that in the time of this thesis is building their first car for an official Formula Student competition. The focus has been to design a seat that provides good ergonomics for a range of users, which is an important support for driver changes. Also, the project has focused on making use of environmentally sustainable materials, which also appreciated by design judges at the competitions. With the user-centred design framework as the main methodology, literature review, benchmarking and use of the digital ergonomic tool NX Human set the foundation of the research phase, while the following methods of prototyping, user testing and design iteration became the central methods for finalizing the seat design. With the help of 3D-scanning of final testing prototype, surface modelling, computer aided design and CNC-milling, a mould for the seat was created, enabling manufacturing of the real seat. This process resulted in a highly comfortable and usable seat design, ergonomically approved by user testing of the final prototype. Material selection for the seat resulted in the unique composite layup which used a combination of flax fibres and basalt fibres for reinforcement, which were especially chosen for their aspects of sustainability and cost-effectiveness while still having the desired physical performance. The final design became realised into a real first composite prototype, truly opening the possibilities for Luleå Formula Student to optimise a seat for their current, and possibly future, projects for use in real competitions.