Seat Back Side Frame Structure for Easier Upper Frame Assembly
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing vehicle seat designs face challenges in improving assembly efficiency, ensuring strength while minimizing weight, enhancing rigidity without increasing weight, and reducing the workload during assembly of the seat back frame.
Innovation Solution
The vehicle seat design incorporates side frames with curved regions formed by bent front and rear walls, an upper frame with specific bending features, and strategic welding and superimposition pieces to enhance rigidity and support, while allowing for more efficient assembly.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Strength
If the side frame is made thicker to ensure strength, then the strength is improved, but the weight increases
Solution Approach 1:
The side frame employs varying plate thickness along its length, with thicker sections at critical locations (such as the rotating shaft portion and hinge joined parts) and thinner sections in non-critical areas. This local quality variation ensures strength where needed while minimizing overall weight.
Solution Approach 2:
The plate thickness parameter of the side frame is changed along its longitudinal direction, transitioning from a uniform thickness to a variable thickness profile. This parameter change allows optimization of the strength-to-weight ratio by concentrating material where structural demands are highest.
2Weight of moving object
If the side frame plate thickness is varied to reduce weight, then the weight is reduced, but the rigidity of the linked part may be affected
Solution Approach 1:
The side frame maintains sufficient plate thickness at the linked part (where the upper frame connects) to preserve rigidity, while reducing thickness in other areas to minimize weight. This localized quality variation ensures that rigidity is maintained where structurally critical.
Solution Approach 2:
The side frame incorporates curved regions with bent front and rear walls that form angular U-shaped cross-sections. These curved structures enhance rigidity through geometric reinforcement while using less material than a straight, uniformly thick frame would require.
3Strength
If the upper frame is inserted into side frames from both sides during assembly, then the connection strength is improved, but the assembly complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of inserting the upper frame into the side frames from the front (which would require sandwiching between left and right side frames), the upper frame is inserted from the rear side of the side frames. This inverted assembly approach simplifies the process by allowing sequential insertion rather than simultaneous coordination of multiple components.
4Ease of manufacture
If the side frame has uniform thickness, then the manufacturing is simplified, but the strength at critical parts is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The side frame transitions from uniform thickness to variable thickness, with localized thickening at critical parts (rotating shaft portion, hinge joined parts) to enhance strength where structurally necessary, while maintaining simpler geometry in non-critical areas.
Data Source
AI summary
In a vehicle seat, a side frame of a seat back frame has a front wall that is formed so as to be bent inward continuously from a front edge of a plate-shaped portion and forms a curved region extending vertically from around the rotating shaft and reaching an upper frame, and a rear wall that is formed so as to be bent inward continuously from a rear edge of the plate-shaped portion and forms a curved region extending vertically from around the rotating shaft and reaching the upper frame, and an inner edge of the front wall has a projecting piece that spreads to the inside from a virtual outline corresponding to a shape of the upper frame and is superimposed on the front wall of the upper frame from the rear. This provides a vehicle seat that can contribute to improvement of the work efficiency when assembling a seat back frame.