Analysis of partial-body and whole-body static sitting comfort

The whole-body comfort sensation was moderately to highly correlated with local body part comfort sensation in both sitting and driving, in order to understand what exact relationship exists between them, the seating comfort evaluations under the stimulus of four body parts (i.e. backs, waist, hips and thighs) were carried out for 15 subjects separately, subjective ratings on both partial-body and whole-body comfort are derived under different conditions. Impact factor (IF) of the partial-body comfort to whole-body comfort is calculated by the linear regression method, and the main variables are obtained by the stepwise regression algorithm. The most significant local body part in influencing whole body comfort is found at the region of hips, followed by backs, waist and hips. With impact factor analysis on partial body comfort, the results show that the local comfort feeling of waist is most potential to be influenced by other body parts, while the comfort sensitivity of thighs is the lowest