Knee room suggestions for passenger vehicles based on Chinese body measurements and knee point polynomial curves

Abstract

The amount of knee room provided for a driver is thoroughly considered during automobile design. An inappropriate design affects not only the driver’s comfort but also the frontal impact score. However, at present, the design standard for a driver’s knee room for the people of China is still lacking, which makes it difficult for engineers to prevent associated problems and can even seriously affect drivers’ comfort. By focusing on the driving postures of the people of China in passenger cars, the spatial curves of drivers’ knee rooms suitable for 95th, 50th and 5th percentiles of the Chinese population are investigated in this study based on polynomial machine learning algorithms. The curves change during driving and are stretched into surfaces, which are known as the limit surfaces of the knee room, to limit the component design around the knee, thereby improving the driver’s comfort. The limit surfaces of the knee rooms studied in this article fill the gap in the non-standardized design of knee rooms for passenger vehicles and are highly valuable in commerce.